In the world of marketing, one of the most valuable assets a company can have is a singularly distinctive reputation. It must unwaveringly play to its strengths in a way no one else does. The Volkswagen Beetle carved out a unique niche in the car market in the 1960s by emphasizing its small stature/cuteness, and didn’t second-guess the decision when it noticed Chevrolet producing muscular, high-powered Corvettes across the Atlantic.
While far from small, the electronic-dance duo Big Gigantic lost its competitive edge as a saxophone-driven, melody-packed dance machine on its latest album, The Night is Young. Instead, Big Gigantic jumped on the dubstep bandwagon — a fad that left the station four years ago and has long since been depleted of fuel.
Big Gigantic didn’t always feel the compulsion to throw in as many computerized tricks into its music as possible. The Boulder, CO duo was firmly grounded in hip-hop, funk, and a touch of jazz. Saxophonist and producer Dominic Lalli earned his Master’s Degree in jazz from the Manhattan School of Music, and the group’s earlier full-lengths Nocturnal (2012) and A Place Behind the Moon (2010) featured a healthy portion of jazz and blues-infused riffs. Lalli masterfully blended these smooth runs with the rich tones of the synth, and on occasion he combined the vibrato of the sax with the modulation of the synth to create funky moments reminiscent of Stevie Wonder’s dreamlike touch on the keys.
The new album’s opening track, “Clvdbvrst,” hints at Big G’s formerly R&B-influenced beats and tasteful sax hooks. But about a minute into the song, a classically predictable and overly dramatic dubstep buildup and drop leads into a frenzy of whiney, disconnected sirens from jarring synth noises. As it does for much of the album, Lalli’s horn takes a back seat to the pounding cacophony of clamor of the drums and synth. All this distraction sounds like a weak attempt to compensate for musicality with electronic flash.
On its title track, “The Night is Young,” Big Gigantic’s sound conforms again — this time to align itself with the resurgence of disco. The song features a rare vocal appearance from electro-pop duo Cherub, much like how electronic duo Daft Punk featured Pharrell Williams on the Grammy-winning single “Get Lucky.” Not only does Big Gigantic attempt to recreate Daft Punk’s catchy baseline and match Pharrell’s high falsetto with Cherub’s, but there is a striking resemblance between Cherub’s lyrical message (“The night is young, do what we want”) compared to Pharrell’s line (“She’s up all night for good fun, I’m up all night to get lucky”). Moreover, Big Gigantic blatantly ripped off the single cover of “Get Lucky” — unless the identical font, warm colors emanating from the sun, and silhouetted formations in the background were independent thoughts (as opposed to random access memories).
The closest Big Gigantic gets to reaching its former heights with its hip-hop-dance sound is the album’s closer, “Shooting Stars.” Only here does the group stretch back to its former self and produce more rhythmic and melodic lines from the sax and synth, less boisterous beats, and an overall more mature musical arc.
But at this point, it was too late — Big Gigantic has already seen the wonder and glory that came with adopting murky mechanized sounds, convulsing wobbles, and high-screeching reverberations into its musical repertoire. Big Gigantic previously occupied an incredibly unique space in the sphere of funk, dance, and hip hop. But on The Night is Young, the group abandoned its individuality for the saturated, and perhaps safer, arena of heavily-edited electronica and dubstep.
Big Gigantic has made a conscious move towards a more muscular, high-powered genre of electronic music. Maybe, however, it should have taken a lesson from the VW Bug, ignored the size of its own name, and embraced its uniqueness.
The Night is Young