New Music: Rat Boy - Move

Somewhere back in the late 90’s in the UK if you happened along Brighton beach sometime around about 9pm, the chances are you’d find a queue of die-hard indie and dance kids readying themselves for a night of slamming block busting tunes formed around heavy breakbeats, samples and loops. The queue was for the Concorde, the club was The Big Beat Boutique and it was there that records from the likes of Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers and Bentley Rhythm Ace (and many that nobody knew) created what seemed to be the future sound of music. For a short while the Concorde was to Brighton what the Hacienda was to Manchester. Regrettably I never went; at the time I was living on a houseboat on the River Thames and was having too much fun in London. But the Big Beat sound still managed to soundtrack part of my life around that time. I even had my first few shoddy attempts at DJing because of it.

But as we drifted into a new decade Big Beat slowly died and its sound was largely forgotten except by those of a certain age and musical persuasion; it has relatively small influence on the music of today.

Then yesterday I pressed play on the new song by Rat Boy. Now let’s get one thing absolutely straight here - up until now Rat Boy and his music has been of no interest to me whatsoever. Sure, he’s on the BBC Sound of 2016 list and he’s been supported by Radio 1, but to my ears he sounds too much like a grubby but possibly more commercial take on Jamie T and frankly one Jamie T is enough round these parts.

But wait… new song Move is nothing like Jamie T! Instead it heads straight down to the ghost of the Big Beat Boutique and throws the Beastie Boys (particularly Body Movin’ – the Fatboy Slim remix of course) onto the decks. OK, still no marks for originality and it will be totally forgotten in a year, but I’m giving this one the cheesy Breaking More Waves thumbs up for sheer unadulterated fun. Come on, let’s dance.

Rat Boy - Move