Darren Pain and Russell Harris know how to make a dance song. Better than that, they know how to properly throw their electronic influences together and create dance music throbbing with fuzzed-out bass lines, synths, and samples.
Go Yoko! don’t necessarily attain a distinct, raw sound to transcend these influences on their debut EP Uno!, but this never comes off as distasteful – rather, as the familiar . The duo’s collection of tracks muster their unique flourishes from the samples used throughout, featured on pulsing songs like “Faster” (which lives up to its name) and “Lost In Time”, giving the otherwise generally dark, moody dance tracks snarky personality.
It can’t be stressed enough: Listeners might be tempted to peg Go Yoko’s sound in between Daft Punk’s recent foray in Disney film scoring and Grant Kirkhope’s soundtrack work on the Nintendo 64 title Perfect Dark. However, it’s the duo’s play on space that also works in their favor, such as the atmospheric breaks in minor-key palpitation “Dot Dot Dash” and the welcome tempo changes in the opener.
Go Yoko!’s extremely gratifying, hard-edged, and fun sound is sure to please future fans, both at electronic-leaning festivals and in headphones, granted their openness for experimentation grows.
Essential Tracks: “Dot Dot Dash”, “The Reaper”
