If you’ve listened to the radio, been to a mall, have a teenager or a twenty-something in your household, or fancy yourself a new music buff, chances are you’ve heard MGMT at some point in the last 6 months or so. They’ve garnered a fair amount of radio play and critical acclaim thanks to the power of 2 singles from thier “Oracular Spectacular” album; “Electric Feel” and “Kids”.

If you’ve been to a nightclub, listened to a Ministry of Sound compilation, visited a house music blog, or fancy yourself a dance music buff, chances are you’ve heard Sebastian Ingrosso at some point in the last year or so. A member of the Swedish House Mafia, Ingrosso is undeniably one of the most influential, innovative, and entertaining EDM artists around. One of Ingrosso’s recent offerings is centered around the catchy and infectious melody of MGMT’s “Kids”. Dubbed “Kidsos”, this club banger just has that “something special” that I look for in a track. Ingrosso manages to successfully reinterpret a hip, playful, unembellished theme, adopting it as a key constituant of a powerful, churning, club-friendly composition. A powerful energy is quickly built at the outset of the track. This energy isn’t lost during the breakdown, where Ingrosso enlists the help of a high-pass filter to slowly introduce the instantly recognizable theme that will have your dancefloor screaming and clapping as the song builds into a crescendo. That’s when fun really starts.

As the break approachs the climax, Ingrosso shows off his savvy and credability as an experienced producer and DJ by slamming the pedal the floor. In an all-out mind-blowing drop, reminiscent of an Indy car screaming past you at 185 miles per hour, we say goodbye to “Kids” and again say hello to the furious shuffle and groove that we last experienced immediately before the break.

What I love most about this track is that instead of throttling back and slowly rebuilding the energy after the break, Ingrosso meets the listener’s expectations of a satisfying release from the tension built in the break. In what seems to be a rather popular but annoying trend in most electro-house tunes lately, producers insist on bringing listeners to plane of energy, after a break, that falls far short of what had been developed before the break. From there, the producer attempts to rebuild the momentum and energy, eventually matching or exceeding the heights to which the listener was brought earlier in the track.

I find this to be a frustrating, unsatisfying, and counter-intuitive method to engage the listener. Nothing, to me, is more disappointing than an epic build-up to a climax that fails to deliver on a promise of satisfaction.

Sebastian Ingrosso gets that. He understands it. And man, does he deliver with Kidsos.

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