Funn City All-Night People
Morgan Geist may have just landed a UK number-one single, but Metro Area remains his […]
Morgan Geist may have just landed a UK number-one single, but Metro Area remains his most critically acclaimed project. Darshan Jesrani, his partner in that duo, has been relatively quiet since the pair first ceased operations some years ago—the two actually reunited for a run of live shows earlier this year—but his just-launched Startree label suggests that he is still investigating Metro Area’s DNA. All-Night People, Jesrani’s first single as Funn City, recalls the sort of material the duo dug out for its Fabric 43 mix—if not outright cheesy, it does capture a kind of exuberance that just doesn’t exist anymore.
The track is as tight as one would expect from a producer with Jesrani’s pedigree. Lean and rigidly funky, it’s also more hi-NRG than anything in recent memory, though that perky sound isn’t exactly in vogue right now. On the disco mix, there’s a straight-faced vocal about the pleasures of the nightlife, the sort of thing that fluctuates between sounding outrageously dated and totally fun and current. Fortunately though, the track’s dub is a legitimate dub, spacing that vocal out so that it’s not so prevalent. In either case, Jesrani’s shimmying arrangement, laced with an unabashedly goofy portamento lead and all kinds of percussive flourishes tucked neatly into the corners, is nothing if not infectious. It certainly stands apart from the current landscape.