![]() And if we all moved on from this kind of dramatic progressive trance pretty quickly, well, so did he - sophomore album 23am, released just a year after the “Children” takeover, is much more resolute in its chill, disposing of Dreamland‘s rigid 4/4 pulse for much more elastic, temperate and occasionally altogether invisible rhythms.īesides, though the oontz– oontz beat and infinite echo of Miles’ biggest hit have mostly been phased out of the contemporary EDM toolkit, the lessons it provided continued to reverberate - not only in the similarly chiming piano hooks to ’10s hits like Alesso’s “Years,” but in the central idea that you don’t need more than one gigantic instrumental riff to take over not just the clubs, but the entire world. Zoom out on it and there’s not much separating it from Orbital’s 1992 euphoric house classic “Halcyon,” one of the most acclaimed dance songs of the ’90s and a song that aged well enough to soundtrack the closing montage to a generational teen movie a decade later in a totally non-winking way. ![]() Anyway, Miles’ productions were richer and less cheesy than he was properly given credit for: Take “Fantasya,” also from Miles’ debut, which paired a skipping beat with wordless, cloud-scaling diva vocals and and a strong bass undertow. shouting at Tom Cruise through his cell phone.ĭoes that make “Children” sound dated, then? Yes, of course, but “dated” is one of the most frustrating words in music discussion as if providing the definitive sound of a moment in time is an inherently bad thing. But it’s the “Children” melody that ended up the real time machine, as short a trip back to 1996 as Cuba Gooding Jr. (Rapper Tyga clearly found it unshakeable, prominently sampling it for his 2015 single “$timulated.”) It’s hardly the only great piano riff that Miles ever managed on Dreamland alone there are a handful of ivory-tickling tracks that rival “Children” for brain-stickiness - like “Fable” and “One & One,” both top 10 hits essentially everywhere but the U.S., and No. In all ’90s pop, perhaps only Marc Cohn’s “Walking in Memphis” only comes close to stimulating as much reflexive air-piano as “Children” 20 years later and it still takes just one measure to guarantee that the thing will be Slinky-ing up and down your subconscious for the rest of the day. And the piano hook - dear lord, the piano hook.
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