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The Wiseguys - The Antidote

Limeygit

Forget the damn frogs, the advertising agency in charge of creating Budweiser commercials in the UK are a little bit more in touch with their intended audience. See in the UK Budweiser has a kind of bizarre when you think about it glamorous image. Yep that most mainstream and boring of American beers is projected to the youth of Britain as being exciting, exotic and 'with it'. So when a young executive heard 'ooh la la' a dance track by DJ Theo Keating, aka Touche, aka The Wiseguys, he decided its catchy off beat combination of Hip-Hop and Beck was pure Gold. One large television advertising campaign later and 'ooh la la' is Number 2 in the British charts, and Fatboy Slim has a contender for the title of most popular commercial dance DJ.

CD CoverThe album that includes that single is a packed (it is just 8 seconds short of 74 mins) with 18 dance tracks that vary from obvious catchy bounce inducing tunes like 'cowboy '78', with its mixing of native chants with the continuous cry of 'Big Dog' to the straight ahead Hip-Hop of 'The grabbing hands'. Touche claims to be a huge fan of early Hip-Hop, but this as a whole is not what an American audience would recognize as such. It uses the urban rhythms of Hip-Hop but lyrical the majority of songs are based around single refrains, mixed into the overall sound. A couple showcase actual lyrics, but the albums real strength lies in the simple dance tracks that appeal to a large sweaty crowd venue, rather than independent listening.

What The Wiseguys, which is Touche surrounded by a couple of other talented DJs, offer is an intoxicating if not ground breaking mixing of Fatboy Slim's commercial sensibilities with old school US dance music, with a hint of Beck and The Beastie Boys thrown in. Fans of any of these artists will find a lot to like on this album, as will anyone who likes pure fun dance tracks, built around the kind of throw away slogans that will occupy your mind for a long, long time.

As we speak The Wiseguys are touring the US, and will be hitting Canada in conjunction with Fatboy Slim, now that Ladies and Gentlemen should finally get those crazy Canadians sweating. Should be an amazing show. Whether mainstream America is ready for an album of this nature is debatable, but with dance clubs beginning to really take off in the US, this album should find its way into a fair few homes.

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