JAMES CHANCE & THE CONTORTIONS – INCORRIGIBLE (LIV SPENCER & DJ SPUN MIX) (160 kbps)

As a huge fan of James Chance & The Contortions and as a massive no wave nerd in general I was pretty excited to hear that their new single, Incorrigible, would be coming out on one of my favourite record labels ever, Rong Music. The song definitely doesn’t disappoint, a total groovester that shows how James Chance has lost none of his shine considering he must be at least two hundred years old by now. But it’s the remix by Liv Spencer & DJ Spun that gets top billing on the EP, and for pretty good reason too – it is totally, utterly out of this world. It transforms the rhythmic discord of the original into something else entirely…an absolutely thumping, gargantuan acid disco monster…a facemelter of the highest calibre.

It isn’t a lie when I say that – from a club perspective at least – this is the best thing I’ve heard this year. The sort of thing that needs to be listened to very, very loud on the best sound system available, in the highest audio quality you can get it in, to appreciate to the fullest.

My excitement when I first heard it was basically incomparable to any other moment of joy or ecstasy that I’ve experienced in my living memory. And yet when I played it to my friend, his face remained solid, stoic, expressionless. I was perplexed and asked he they didn’t think anything to it, but all I was met with was silence and the same cold, distant eyes.

A moment later, he collapsed. The doctors pronounced him dead at the scene.

“You played him this without any warning?”

I nodded.

“Foolish,” the doctor sighed, shaking his head. He removed a rubber glove from his hand and rubbed his eyes, eyes that I could tell had seen cases like this before, “Very foolish.”

As my friend’s body, sealed in a blank body bag, was carted on to the ambulance later that day, the driver reassured me. “It’s okay, kid. I remember the first time I had to deal with a haemorrhage when someone heard a song that was just too huge for their brain to cope with…” Memories of a teenager, lying inert and lifeless on the dancefloor twinkled in his eye. “Two thousand and seven – it was his first night raving. He’d only just turned eighteen, and hadn’t heard Lower State Of Consciousness out before. It was on a Funktion One…he didn’t stand a chance. Stuff like that haunts you, you know?” ?