A guilty pleasure

The nice side effect of living under a rock is that you tend to get good surprises when you leave your little shelter.

Let's take the example of Calvin Harris. This young (he turned 24 a few weeks ago) Scot from Dumfries released his first album, the very modestly titled "I Created Disco", in June 2007 in the UK and in September 2007 in the US, and I just heard about it this very morning.

So you know the story, EMI discovered his myspace page in 2006, signed him and sent him in studio with his old Amiga to produce not only his album but also singles for Róisìn Murphy, Kylie Minogue and Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Two EPs and an album in the UK Top 10, a tour of UK and Australia fronting a full live band later, Harris will eventually cross the pond to attend the Winter Music Conference in Miami, FL at the end of next March, and Coachella next April.

OK, the album is not original, it really drags at times, it's a tad childish (yay! drugs! girls! drugs and girls!) and lacks the depth of, say, a LCD Sound System whose influence can be felt throughout the disc (the opening of "Merrymaking..." sounds an awful lot like "Daft Punk is playing..."), but it's a first album by an early twentysomething and it's tongue-in-cheek enough, so we can be forgiving.

In any case, a song like "Acceptable in the 80s" is quite infectious. "I got hugs for you/if you were born in the 80es", that's so totally like my love life. (OK, let's forget about the second half of the 80es, it's enough of a mess as it is that I don't want any legal complications on top of that).

MP3: Acceptable in the 80s (GTI)