As this music-loving blogger’s birthday fast approaches I’m drawn to a couple songs—one new and one from 2017—both by Black Light Smoke, aka Jordan Lieb, a Chicago-to-New-York transplant who’s been billed elsewhere as a “producer, songwriter, and Daytime Emmy Award winning film and tv composer [who] spans house, techno, minimal synth and post punk” and yes I’m pretty sure this is the Deli’s first ever blog entry about a Daytime Emmy Award winner.
Staring with the older song first, “Take Me Out (Tonight)” which features Léah Lazonick on vocals, is something like a disco-nap-wet-dream built around a conversation between two horny dating-app bots that captures that perfect mix of anticipation and desperation that’s likely to spawn a memorable night out that you won’t remember in the morning.
In other words, the perfect birthday song. And the remix by Cabaret Nocturne ups the ante further with a propulsive coldwave beat that’s something like the dead-eyed seductive stare of a vampire as she/he/it slowly caresses your neck whilst sizing up your carotid artery. So check it out, yo.
The newer song is “Work” and it’s the leadoff track from Black Light Smoke’s new EP of the same name. This one has more of a rigorous house music meets electro feel with no shortage of synthetic 808 hand claps and features the same Brooklyn-based Léah Lazonick mentioned above who sternly declames lines like “I don’t have time for other people’s shit / I don’t have time to listen to your DJ mix…get to bed wake up and work / keep the baby ‘cause I work” etc. etc.
And seeing as there’s nothing like a birthday to make one realize one needs to get one’s shit together (all due respect to Tommy Wiseau) "Work" actually feels just as B-Day appropriate as “Take Me Out” does if not more so. And so…now I must get back to work. But don’t worry I will find time to listen to your DJ mix/mixtape/new single/rock opera because that’s kinda my job. (Jason Lee)