´óÏó´«Ã½

Communicated to us through the use of persistent bleeps, mild arhythmatism and fuzzy sample noises, Simian Mobile Disco have worked tirelessly to get this massively important and shocking message out. People could, right now, as you read this, probably be getting down to some horizontal tangoing - no, no, wait, hang on, I can't do this.

The NME and a few other publications - used to hanging around the dingy backs of student unions staring at their feet or their haircuts or whatever it is the kids do these days - are getting terribly excited about all this crazy electronic dance music that's sweeping the nation and how wildly sexy it all is, partly fuelled by the artists' own positing on the subject and the fact the videos feature people doing crazy mad things like snogging members of their own gender in a rather cheap men's weekly-style titillatory manner.

But for God's sake, everyone, get a grip. This song is, at its most extreme, possibly about selling yourself, it's voiced by a kid (at least, if it's not a kid, it's someone with a very childlike voice) and mostly it's concerned with the old-fashioned act of being broke and wanting to buy some CDs.

I'm not totally sure whether the hustling refers to the piracy of music due to lack of funds to buy said CDs, as I briefly thought, since the second verse moves on to actually stealing stuff from a shop. But just because it's not the sort of thing you want your parents to find out about, it doesn't mean it's the stuff of the internet's darkest, most stained recesses. There' naugty and then there's total filth, you see.

What on earth all the young ladies are doing in the video is anyone's guess, frankly but there seems to be a bit of a deep-seated dichotomy going on here.

On the one hand, the thesis, professed by the fairly filthy bump and grind of the electronics, says "go and get it on with someone, go on, go and do it now it will be great fun". On the other, the antithesis says "get yer piracy on, you're too young to go to jail just yet".

Synthesised, these seem to suggest your parents'll never know if you get it on with a CD.

The problem with thesis-antithesis in songs, though (especially ones with synthesizers in them, where it all just gets rather more confusing than it already is) is that sometimes it works. Sometimes it REALLY works.

Take 'All This Love' by The Similou. On the one hand, bouncy electropop, on the other, raving despair. Or the old chestnut, 'Angels' by Sir Robbie of Williams; played at weddings, actually about not really caring about your loving counterpart (and loving angels instead).

So you see, dialectical songs aren't always a bad thing, unless they somehow manage to lock themselves into some struggle for compatibility between the parts, like trying to put a desk together and realising you've been given a block of cheese instead of one of the legs. Full points for trying to synthesise the impossible but at the end of the day, sooner or later your desk is going to smell and probably fall over and just when you're getting it on, you'll suddenly think "hrmm, I really want that new Jimmy Eat World album, shame I haven't got the cash" and the mood will be killed FOREVER.

The other angle to take on the whole thing would be, of course, that Simian Mobile Disco are just a fairly inept electronic act, reliant on a slightly controversial video () and some relatively lazy sexy effects last cutting edge in the 1980s and that this song is a gigantic car crash that has no idea where its going at all.

Although really, that makes it seem more interesting than it deserves; tightly restrained as it is now, this could have been a bonkers spag-out and developed its dichotomy into a throbbing madness but as it is, it just ends up sounding like an advert soundtrack for something trying desperately to be cool.

Download: Out now
CD Released: November 26th

(Hazel Robinson)