Beat Detectives “Summer in the City” (exclusive)

28 Apr 2014 — Trey Reis

It would be interesting to follow a two year trajectory of every band that ever released a tape on Night People. It’s something like the Madden Curse in reverse: almost every band to have a release on the St.Paul-based imprint goes on to larger labels and bigger releases. Anymore, it’s not uncommon for most bands to have some kind of tape release in their discography from some obscure label that no one has ever heard of. It’s the nature of tape labels, and the reason we obsess over them so much; the search for long sold-out copies of the often less refined pieces of a musician’s past. In this case, Minneapolis trio, Beat Detectives, seem to be the exception, with releases on 100% Silk and Moon Glyph under their belt before they ever hit the Night People roster. That’s quite the spread already, without the mention of their newest release ASSCOP, slated for release next month via 1080p.

On ASSCOP, the process from previous releases hasn’t changed much, which works just fine for me. Their radio tuned-in approach to skittering between dance floor styles was a breath of fresh air to begin with, amongst an always-updating Soundcloud stream of beat-driven uploads from beatmakers across the globe. Take this premiere for album single, “Summer in the City”, for example. The track begins with an audio wrestling match between radio stations, before the hi-hat driven beat comes oozing from the speakers like warm liquid. A wide scope of vocal layers, ranging from a kind of ever-present growl to throwaway home-video snippets, are added and dropped with the ease of pressing a button. The rough cut-and-paste style, which the group has slowly perfected over their previous releases, serves “Summer in the City” as a smattering of drops, each time transforming the beat throughout the spectrum of equalization.

ASSCOP is available in cassette form from 1080p on May 6.