Whitey's debut release ‘Why You Have To Be Me’ came out roughly a year and a half ago. A wonderfully executed mash up of dance and rock music it quickly became an underground favourite. Although very little is known about the man behind Whitey, we do know he resides in London and that as this is the follow up to his debut he’s determined to drip feed us his music. In an interview broadcast the other night he also claims to have played less than 10 gigs so far on the basis that it is more of an event than playing each week and people becoming bored.
There’s a certain amount of arrogance tied into this concept (especially when you think of all those bands that play the toilet circuit for years on end) but on the evidence of his two releases so far it’s justified. ‘Leave Them all Behind’ begins with throbbing electro pulses before drums that AC / DC would be proud of kick in. It then moves us into a locked down groove with head spinning electronic flourishes and a haunting half vocal. Although it does have a breakdown in the middle, on the whole it sticks to one pace until hypnotic. It’s dance music with drone rock pretensions.
On the flip ‘Just Another Animal’ follows similar lines with it’s driving beat, techno stabs and creepy vocal. Lyrically Whitey seems to be using words for their sound rather then any real coherent meaning. ‘Just Another Animal’ also appeared on the debut single as a b side although it seems to have been beefed up slightly this time round. Final track ‘Twoface’ rides along on a frenetic, jittery drum sound and driving bass line. Over the top phased vocals add a disturbing element to complete a twitchy, nervous beast of a tune.
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Whitey now has major label backing (Regal is part of Capitol music) and having heard several other tracks from the (hopefully) forthcoming album, his slim body of work so far would appear to be anything but a fluke. Whitey adds to the current blurring of genres to create music aimed for the dance floor but not tied to boring and outdated notions of what dance music should be. We need more records like this.
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