23
Dec 14
WAMDUE PROJECT – “King Of My Castle”
A question that haunts a project like Popular is how you review things that have a very specific context – no, more than a context, a specific use – when you have never put them to that use. We’re now shifting out of the time when I was going, even occasionally, to clubs that played mainstream dance music, and a record like “King Of My Castle” is plainly built for those clubs. Not just in an “it’s good to dance to” sense. While the Wamdue Project obviously bring a hook or two, this is still one of the track-iest of number ones, built from the crunchy house beat out.
In a club setting, you imagine, the spidery synth line and the haughty vocals would be the sauce for that beat – memory and sense triggers to enhance rhythm and motion. But listening at home, the voice and melody jump to the foreground, taking on a weight of attention they can’t really bear. The result, in the unsympathetic circumstance of kitchen or desk, feels something like Eiffel 65 for grown-ups – remorselessly repetitive nonsense. Except “King Of My Castle” isn’t even designed to work as a song, and isn’t using annoyance as a deliberate aesthetic effect. It’s annoying because listening to it as a standalone single breaks the use of it.
That said, this track sold so excessively compared to the usual American house imports – it moved a few million across Europe – that it must have had some crossover appeal. Even if it doesn’t progress much in its single edit, “King Of My Castle” has a memorably cryptic hook – free in my what? – and enough sass in its stomp to pass muster as this year’s equivalent of The Tamperer: something you could strut to in party season. Still, it’s hard not to feel this is a neutered record, stranded outside a DJ set.
4
The vocals by Gaelle Adisson were lipsynched in the video and on stage by an Argentinian model, scuppering any chance for Adisson to capitalize on its success. Why this was deemed acceptable in the wake of Milli Vanilli escapes me.
The track itself seems fine, nothing extraordinary. 5.
I was listening to a lot of Brazilian pop in 1999 and enjoying the vocals as a series of open vowels and percussive consonants and I’m happy to do the same with this. There’s not a great deal of variety but occasional touches (like a flute sound at one point) provide some interest. It doesn’t sound like the most obvious number 1 though.
Aw man, this is a great pop song and I’ve never even BEEN to a nightclub*. One of the videos was a compilation of clips from Ghost in the Shell (the first Western AMV?), which must have been TERRIBLY hip in 1999.
Anyway, the vocal hook is great, the boingy synth line is even better, the incredibly synthetic ‘poing’ sound that comes up a couple of times is best (remind me in 2014 when we hit another song that gets a surprising amount of mileage from an occasional poing). A little joy: [7]
*technically a lie but it wasn’t my choice and I didn’t enjoy it much
I think I was a little harsh on this last night – should have been a 5.
Meanwhile, 100 entries in a calendar year, which I’ve not managed since…. well, since quite early on in Popular.
I’ve never been a clubber but I enjoyed this at the time and I like it now. The repetition of the vocals – no verses here – and that thudding industrial beat give it a rather hypnotic quality. I like how airy and detached her vocals are too, it gives what could have been quite a heavy handed song room to breathe.
Not my genre of choice in general, but one of 1999’s more intriguing chart toppers.
Also notable for possibly the most frequently mis-heard lyric in a dance hit since Gala and her lover’s strong beliefs. Free in my trasseau? Trousseau? I had no idea what that might mean (she’s actually singing ‘trapped soul’ obviously) but it just added to the mystique at the time.
6.
#4: Cracking progress, Tom – nice to have the last two songs of 1999 coming up over the equivalent period of this year, too.
The UK number one version of “King of My Castle” was apparently a “remix by techno producer Roy Malone” (says that article I linked above), so I was curious to hear the original. It’s here.
I always heard it as a mangling of “threshold”, which had a nicely archaic ring – “free in my threshold” is the sort of thing you can imagine turning up in medieval jurisprudence.
I planned to mention the ambient original but didn’t get around to it – a thoroughly generic bit of chill-out. Another trivia bit that didn’t get in the review – “Wamdue” is apparently short for “What I’m Gonna Do”.
Prior to listening to this again, the only thing I could actually remember about it was the titular vocal hook, and my brain had somehow retrospectively reconstituted it into some kind of shonky trance beast. Listening properly, it sounds really weedy and rhythmically stilted, like a quickly assembled Sing It Back knockoff.
We’re not far off from the point when the sort of high street clubs where this would have had a home would stop playing new dance music altogether and these kinds of #1s are about to die off, for a while at least. Listening to this you can really hear why.
Dreary washing-machine stuff for the most part; the track-makers aren’t even trying here, nothing builds, nothing moves, and we’re bored to tears by about 2m in. I mean, sure, you’d dance to this if there were no alternatives, if no other dance music had ever been made, but otherwise? One of the crappier octaving bass sounds I’ve ever heard:
2
P.S. Well done Tom on cranking these reviews out, and happy holidays to everyone.
The only interesting thing I remember about this is that it got the Wamdue Project nominated for Best British Dance Act at the Brits, until they realised no one involved was British. Quite embarrassing as it made clear what everyone had always suspected, that the organisers knew nothing about British Dance Music and just skimmed down the charts in December or January to find a few nominees. I think I still did care about the Brits at this point, though, just about.
EDIT: The award went to the Chemical Brothers in the end. Jamiroquai were also nominated.
I find the minimalism of KOMC rather attractive (without realizing there was a whole Black Box situation over the singer. Tut tut, this is really not acceptable at all, in fact), but none the less agree (I think) with Matt DC at #8 that this is the sound of the closing of an era musically. One can find the antecedents of this sort of thing on various labels (white or otherwise) as far back as, at least, ’89, and consider Positiva and others positively churning out the stuff a few years after that…to this at number one almost at the end of the decade. No innovation, nothing remarkable, but with a breathy freshness characteristic of this model of deep house (this is what we called this, broadly, right? The current incarnation of the term is rather different….).
No 1 material? In a time of less high-turnover chart-topper churn, almost certainly not. But in 1999, for one week, it’s neither the most objectionable nor the most incongruous member of the no 1 club.
6
The next bunny along was already attracting the column inches and was breathing down KOMC’s neck in the number two position. It’s worth noting that KOMC would have been a two week runner in most normal circumstances, as it was it was forced to number two the following week but outsold both the final Boyzone single and Mel C’s more than passable Northern Star.
Fifth straight Popular entry that made no impact in America…unlike the others this one’s actually by an American. Despite never being into clubbing, I usually like this type of music, but this just seems dull and repetitive. 4/10 sounds about right.
This was ‘originally’ on Creation Records in the UK wasn’t it? I guess as a grower, by the time it had caught on the license had run out for McGee.
Ah! Mark, you got there first. Yes it came out on their dance spin-off label run by Chris Abbott whose name I shamefully can’t remember. It says a lot about Creation in 1999 that they issued it first but still dropped the ball.
It was actually really common in the 90s for eurodance acts to have fake singers – most notably Corona, Cappella and Real McCoy.
@#1: That “Milli Vanilli” thing is very much usual in dance music. Most of the singers in these tunes are mere session musicians, with no particular visual appeal; hence the recurrent gimmick of filling the promos with miming models.
We actually had that same thing ocurring a bit earlier in the year, when Alice Deejay’s “Better Off Alone” reached #2. The girl miming in the video wasn’t the actual singer, but just another hired model. The next promos, though, would feature the actual singer.
It’s still happening now – UK pop vocalist Kelli-Leigh has been on two separate 2014 bunnies, uncredited and invisible. So expect this to be something we keep on covering.
Umm…yeah, well it’s that branch of dance that I’m not entirely fond of. There’s some rather perfunctory, clumpy-clumpy beats and some nice little touches like the flute motif, but on the whole I agree with Tom. Outside the club, this makes little sense. I remember the anime video from MTV (late night post-watershed showing because, boobies), and a few radio plays, but with little going on, those beats just marked time until the next track came along. I’m all for minimalism, but this feels like wading through treacle. I’m more open to an uptempo, busier remix, like this one by Sander Van Doorn:
http://youtu.be/OMs0PZywruc
5 is about right.
“Free in my tressle”.
Well done Tom, that’s a fierce and much appreciated workrate!
#17: So I gather, but in this case the singer’s visage seems perfectly appealing to me (see Google images) (see also 2014 bunny which sticks two fingers up to narrow notions of visual appeal). A substitute in the video is dodgy but might be justifiable on some level (but not really), but keeping up the pretense by having the model lipsynch in live performances goes too far, I reckon, when it’s denying a young singer her break.
#14 and 15, Eruption/Infonet ?
It was Eruption, so I’m not sure if Chris Abbott was involved.
Misha (McGee’s mate from on holiday) and Technique (McGee’s wife) were Creation’s priorities in 1999 though, so a no.1 single slipped through their fingers.
They also dropped Kevin Rowland’s My Beauty like a hot potato around the time of King Of My Castle. I wish it sounded as extreme as its cover, but I found it very tame.
To follow on from #8 and #11 you could argue that most of the number 1’s coming up over the next 12-18 months or so which are commercial Dance were symbolic of the impending ‘end of an era’, and indeed it’s been touched upon already on the ATB post (I stand by my Milky claim). However, scanning down the list of chart toppers from this period I’d say the first number 1 of 2001 was probably the real watershed.
Re23: Mishka! I had forgotten all about him. There was an inordinate number of terrible signings in the history of Creation, but none ever felt more wrong than this coffee-shop reggae bollocks merchant. Basically, the annoying trustafarian playing Bob Marley covers down the beach who you chuck a shoe at (according to Wikipedia: ‘He represented Bermuda in 1991 and 1992 in the windsurfing world championships’). Fuck me.
The review could have at least mentioned that the version that got to number one was a remix by Roy Malone. The soundalike follow up, again remixed by Malone, was ‘You’re the reason’, which if my memory serves me right only scraped into the Top 40. If ‘You’re the reason’ had come first, it would have been the better tune. Maybe it is anyway.
Must be a reason why I’m free to mud wrestle
This number one set a new record, at 14 – and I don’t believe it’s been equalled or surpassed. 14 what? Anyone?
Apols if duplicating/crossposting.
@28 It sold 14 copies, the singles-buying market being at its nadir?
#28 Ah yes, the ultimate bit of trivia. The title “King Of My Castle” uses 14 letters, all different, and is thus the longest No 1 title where no letters are repeated!