DARREN KEEN
“It’s Never Too Late to Say You’re Welcome”
(Orange Milk)




Darren Keen has provided an Understatement of the Year contender with It’s Never Too Late to Say You’re Welcome,” a pixelated facerush of footworky techno, a discombobulated lightshow of anthemic anthems for energy-drink nightfuel hallucinations. It’s never too late to say you’re welcome! Darren, we know. Let’s talk.

I mean, seriously. You should pretty much be saying “You’re welcome” on a constant loop at this point. This new tape is just a smokescreen for the barrage of gratitude that you should be responding to. So what is it? Is the gratitude simply (and inexplicably) absent? Do you want to say it more? Or are you too embarrassed in some way to express outwardly the fact that you require more gratitude?

Here’s the skinny, and by the way, I’m leaning toward the former explanation, because what are you, some shrinking violet hanging back in the shadows of the club? No way, dude, you’re right in the middle of it, cracking the energy you wield on the dancefloor like a centurion’s whip. It’s Never Too Late to Say You’re Welcome is an imperative – yes! – to allow your listeners to embrace you in a crazy cult-rate vibe, parsing every nuance of your output until the elements are laid bare.

But no! Then the abandon becomes lost, disingenuous, and you’re left in a situation where the arigatos fall flat and lose meaning. Every second of this cassette tape counts, and is vitally important to the well-being of the listener. YOU’RE GODDAMNED WELCOME, I demand that of you, consumers of electronic music, that you get that. Say it, Darren, with feeling: YOU’RE WELCOME.

And we are eternally thankful. Never joyless, always full, light-filled, beings made uncharacteristic under the spell of Darren Keen, antithetical to our sedate nature, tossed this way and that like we were on a lifeboat, begging for rescue. But we are on a lifeboat crafted from the creativity of a single musician, and our rescue is at hand. Acknowledge the poor beings in the lifeboat, probably drunk or high on something, but nevertheless expecting gracious liberation. Too long have we been adrift with only half-baked nonsense music to sustain us.

Darren Keen on Soundcloud
Orange Milk

-- Ryan Masteller