A few years back there were a number of Sub Focus live videos that emerged of an unreleased track called ‘Turn It Around‘, a track that seemingly went on to become ‘Out The Blue‘ which was released as a single in 2012. Confusingly, in 2013 we now have a new single from Sub Focus titled ‘Turn It Around‘ making use of a very similar synth line. Featuring Kele Okereke of Bloc Party fame, ‘Turn It Around‘ has a more mellow feel to it than its predecessor, a nice fuzzy bass presence, and a lot to really love about it. Whilst there may be a lot to love here, the synth line similar to ‘Out The Blue‘ which appears in the track is one that you will probably either love or hate. With an almost 8-bit sound, the first occurrence of this synth line really stumped me when first listening to the track; expecting the track to drop into something with an extremely big sound, what’s actually thrown into the mix here is a slightly jarring synth line which absolutely spoilt the track for me on first listen. With repeated listens it became clear that it only actually crops up twice in the track and that the second instance sounds a lot more natural, it’s definitely a bit of a shock to the system when first hearing it though, and I feel that when it first appears it halts the momentum that has been built up until that point and that the overall flow of the music could have been stronger without it.
Looking into the positive aspects of the music there’s an extremely high quality drum & bass underbelly to the track, Kele’s vocals are excellent, and it ticks a lot of boxes in what’s required to make a successful dance single. ‘Turn It Around‘ is bound to get clubbers dancing en masse, is a song that should go down well with radio listeners, and is likely to perform extremely well in the single charts. Not everything about the track may be entirely to my personal tastes, this is nonetheless a pretty decent piece of music though and a drum & bass single that should draw in Bloc Party fans and Sub Focus fans alike, and potentially gain Sub Focus a good number of new devotees in the process.
UK based film graduate with a huge passion for music, sports and video games.
