This album is a perfect example of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. How they went from their previous two masterpiece albums to this nonsense still remains a mystery to many people.

Context: in 2002 microhouse and dub house went out of fashion super fast. In general all the electronic styles that were very polished, that had some hint of intellectualism or that went far from straight fun were swept to make room to the 80s revival and the DYI aesthetic (with out of tune lazy vocals) that got so popular that went out of hand.

So Swayzak tried it, and I think that actually they did a good job. The production sounds very much like Adult., some vocals are better than others, there is one touch of genius in "I dance alone" where Carl Finlow and Nicola from Adult. moan and shout about, yeah, dancing alone in a punkish I Only Get Myself kind of way, and "In the Car Crash" is an obvious nod to both Detroit electro and Gary Numan "Cars". Or "Take my hand", with a proper brit sounding spoken word.

Surprise, then, is that the instrumentals sound so bland, when in Himawari they got the balance so well. It sounds a bit to me like the Jake Fairley second album, but Fairley was better at balancing. Anyway, the pop tunes are good, and it gets the era where it was made pretty well.

And of course as it happened with many other artists that tried electroclash, they kind of went into a cul-de-sac, then tried to come back to dub techno, and then Swayzak, now one of them, seem to be comfortable in their lack of popularity. Whatever, they tried.

The music is good but the vocals are frankly terrible on a lot of the tracks. I would much prefer an instrumental version of this album.

Swayzak's third album, DIRTY DANCING, blend the dubby tech-house of their first with the melodic pop of their second for a hybrid that's all its own creation. Also: they embrace vocals even more fully.
The warmth and heartache of "Make Up Your Mind," for instance, seems suspended in space, as much as the relationship itself is. Meanwhile the dark throb of "Buffalo Seven" and the electro "In the Car Crash" lean in a colder direction. "Celcius" goes for a dense layering effect that doesn't require vocals to stand alone, and even though I dislike Nicola Kuperus' affectless howling over the electro pulse of "I Stand Alone," she gets an assist by Carl Finlow. "Take My Hand" mines similar territory, though with a stronger talk-sing. "The Punk Era," though short, packs plenty of punch in order to let Jeremy Shaw's vocals on the slow drawl of "Halfway To Yesterday" hum forth. But the mysterious easy-listening to hard-driving melody and the bilingual vocals of "Sob 1" make it second only to "Make Up Your Mind" in of gorgeousness. The album closes on "Ping Pong" a track that sounds as if it should have come off their first album -- but it shows that they haven't lost what made them great in the first place. They've only expanded their repertoire.

I got that bad boy in the dollar bin at Amoeba Music having heard older songs from Swayzak. From what I previously heard, Swayzak was right up my alley so picking this up was no brainer. Yet, here comes the but.... I actually like synth-pop but this album is disappointing.

First of all, it's full of repetitive fillers like "Celsius", more interesting songs like "Make Up Your Mind", "I Dance Alone" and "In A Car Wash" are not really taking off. Everything falls flat it seems. I would say though that this album is audible and has few good moments but too far in between to make this memorable.

Being a huge fan of the Swayzak duo I was totally shocked when I heard this. Trashy synth-pop with very little innovation and awful lyrics. Quite far from the minimalism which Swayzak has been associated with or even quality synth-pop like Fischerspooner, Adult, Felix or DMX Krew. The change in orientation shouldn't have been a surprise - the Himawari release already pointed in this direction, altough it still retained a great deal of Swayzak trademark quality and style which went totally missing here. The only track worth mentioning is "I Dance Alone", but it is far too litle to justify purchasing this album. It would have been better if they had released this under another name and said: "This is our more commercial side. An experiment, really, just for fun". However, it looks as though I'm alone on this one. Sad. 3/10.