CLASSIXX | Hanging Gardens [review]

Labels just don’t know how to handle club music producers, which is a shame because the overhead on signing two dudes who travel with generally nothing more than their laptops is minimal, especially when compared with a five or six piece band. Los Angeles-based label Innovative Leisure has decided to release Classixx's debut album, and anyone who has been to a nightclub (that isn’t run on roofie profits) in the past four years has the same perplexed response to this announcement. While even the most veteran rock and roll acts are rushing to release singles rather than full records, labels have decided to enlist electronic acts to pump out LPs either to fulfill contracts, or to try and legitimize themselves in the world of “pop” and claim that they’ve all moved on from doing remixes, as if that’s below them at this point. What’s even more irritating is that these LPs consistently have tracks that have since dissolved from the zeitgeist. It was bad enough when Calvin Harris’ people released “Feel So Close” and then included it on the album 14 months later, but Hanging Gardens (released in May 2013) actually features the single “I’ll Get You” which came out in the summer of 2009. However, the irrefutable crime on this album is that, apart from that geriatric gem and the nod to Baltimora’s “Tarzan Boy” on their track “Dominoes” the album is completely bland, with maybe enough good musical ideas to fill one track at best.