Reviews
The Negativity Bias - "Whatever You Want"
Vital Weekly, 1061
With a title like 'Whatever You Want', I found it hard not to think of the Status Quo song of the same title, but the release by Chris Dupont, also known as The Negativity Bias, has nothing to do with that. I am told he's inspired by SCUBA, Marcel Dettmann, Planetary Assault Systems and S.W.Z.K., none of which I think I ever heard, and he tries to bridge the gap between deep house and industrial music, something that he actually succeeds in pretty well. Like I wrote with the music of Will Long (see elsewhere), I never can be really sure what constitutes as deep house, mainly because I never really looked into the finer specifics of deep house. But listening to this and comparing it to Will Long's release, the differences are quite big, but that is of course also due to the fact that The Negativity Bias wants to combine it with industrial/noise music. The music here is quite forceful and loud, but also has an excellent groove and a very fine 'live feel'. It is almost like The Negativity Bias recorded his music in a live situation, constantly twisting and turning knobs; it's not a static, programmed set of songs or something sequenced using Ableton Live. In many of these songs The Negativity Bias has small minimal changes in the songs, by moving around the faders and sliders. I was thinking what the industrial aspect of this music would be, and maybe it is some of the nastier sounds The Negativity Bias uses off and on, but throughout I just found all of this very pleasant indeed. There is no shock 'n awe value here, only highly entertaining crude house inspired electronic beats. Very lovely indeed.