Pitchfork

An apt pairing, this. At their respective moments, both duos have acted as a gateway drug to dance music consumption for sheepish and/or skeptical rock fan constituencies, and both earned that position by making undeniable hands-in-the-air, glowsticks ahoy floorburners. Wisely ignoring the Fatboy stutters and baggy Manchester / cod Lennon exhortations of the original, the DFA don't pick up much with their remix tongs on their trip to the Chemical salad bar. The backwards reverbed vocal bridge of the original tune bobs up briefly and then sinks to the mucky bottom, like a corpse in a lake. Which leaves us with an inoffensive 10-minute dog-paddle through keening synth flourishes copped from Kool & the Gang's "Summer Madness" (at the start) and shivering filters reminiscent of Klaus Schulze's "Body Love" (by the end).

As a textural panorama it's an undeniably listenable and tasteful affair, and yet one expects a little more given the pedigree assembled here. Perhaps this simmering disco dub is intended as the soundtrack to the post-match rubdown rather than the TKO money shot? The overall lack of punch (sorry) is no doubt a wryly underhanded critique of something or other (or maybe it's just that sometimes you wake up more Cinderella Man than Raging Bull), but given both parties' capacity to produce potent electronic battle weapons, this comes off like parsley expertly woven into the shape of a steak. Which is a shame, as it could have been a contender.