Calvin Harris

Standing on the shoulders of giants like LCD Soundsystem and Daft Punk, 23-year-old Scotsman Calvin Harris makes his full-length debut with I Created Disco, hoping to build on the success of his club-igniting single "Acceptable in the '80s."

While

Harris didn't generate enough fresh ideas to stretch across an entire album, there's certainly evidence that he will outlive his supposed 15 minutes of fame (the Harris buzz and backlash began months before his U.S. release date). Among the form-breakers, "Love Souvenir" taps into a late-night R&B vibe, but then winds up recycling itself, sounding like an inflated interlude. "Electro Man" proves to be a late surprise and highlight, harnessing some Bowie-ish flair and allowing Harris a rare moment of poignancy as he repeatedly sings, "I would go anywhere with you."

For the most part, I Created Disco doesn't stray from the proven blueprint of Daft Punk-descended grooves, twitchy electronic melodies and a mixture of flatly deadpan vocals and flamboyant falsettos. Harris plays to his hard-to-resist strengths on "Acceptable in the '80s," "Merrymaking at My Place" and the lecherous "The Girls" (in which he makes like the Lou Bega of electro-pop). Filter out the filler and the dancefloor will come calling.

—Adam McKibbin
09.04.07

Scottish remixer, songwriter, former bedroom artist, MySpace star, and finally major-label recording artist on EMI, Calvin Harris released his debut album of electronic dance music with snatches of the Human League, or maybe more accurately the League Unlimited Orchestra, in the summer of 2007, including two Top Ten singles, "Acceptable in the 80s" and "The Girls." The former track is a slice of tongue-in-cheek disco-pop for all those born in the decade after dance music took over the world, and the latter extols the virtues of all types of girls (even those carrying a little bitty extra weight), with political correctness abounding as he name-checks that he likes black, white, Asian, and mixed-race girls along with at least half a dozen different nationalities. "Vegas" was released as a vinyl-only track, and one can picture cruising down the Strip in an open-top car, the mobile equivalent of a boogie box or ghetto blaster turned up to maximum, as all the local girls' heads turn to see who's in town. Several of the tracks are instrumentals, including "Certified," "Love Souvenir" (a cool, end-of-the-evening jazzy number), and the title track, although this does have a monologue of Harris explaining how and when he really did create disco. "Traffic Cops" is less than a minute of honking horns, but if you thought that was short, blink once and you would certainly miss the track "Vault Character," eight seconds long with just four electronic notes down the scale. Harris doesn't need to sing -- his electronic noises from the keyboard are quite sufficient -- but when he does sing there is a hint of the accent and attitude of the Streets' Mike Skinner, especially on "Colours" as he sings "I don't care what you dress like or what you wear/But please make sure baby you've got some colours in there," and his rhyming of the title phrase from "Neon Rocks" with "pink socks," which comes with a reminder: "Stop me if I've said it before/I keep my secret stash in the drawer." In keeping with the gaudy neon disco theme, the album was also released as a limited edition with a glow-in-the-dark cover. ~ Sharon Mawer, All Music Guide