Chin Chin – The Flashing, The Fancing

On the press material that accompanies Chin Chin’s record The Flashing, The Fancing, TV on the Radio’s Jaleel Bunton claims that he has witnessed Chin Chin “change a room full of bonafide squares into a frolicking orgy of psychedelic disco warriors.” On their website Chin Chin lets you know that “most of the time we make music to make you dance and bug out.” Clearly the band does not mince words about its intentions. Of course, the talk is big, and it’s probably not as easy as one might think to make people bug out. But Chin Chin is well equipped to deliver on the disco warrior account, for sure.

Judging from the caliber of musicianship they’re got going for them, they could decide to play klezmer prog with calypso polyrhythms and pull it off just as well. The three key members of the band, Wilder Zoby, Jeremy Wilms, and Torbitt Schwartz, are all formal students of jazz and have been working as musicians for years (check out the photo of the band on their website; it looks like the sum total of the years they have between them is roughly that of three other Brooklyn bands put together). Not only that, but they’ve built an impenetrable fortress of musical chops around them, recruiting NY’s finest, dudes from Antibalas to Blonde Redhead, to support them on their mission to bring hedonism back to Brooklyn.

Fortunately the focus of the album is not on musical calisthenics, although clearly much of it is designed to make you sweat. The ability of the players on the record comes through in the incredible tightness of the songs, and the creative arrangements. Any band with a claim to dance floor credibility better have a muscular rhythm section. Chin Chin flexes with the best of em’. Bassist Wilms often carries the entire song on his back, although it might take a couple of listens to realize how powerful (but subtle) his lines are. “GG and The Boys” and “Go There With You” are a couple solid exemplars. Of course, solid bass lines amount to little without an equally bulletproof drummer. But from the “Last Dance” biting up-tempo disco of “Stay” to the laid-back, flam-heavy groove of “That’s Where I’ll Be,” Torbitt Schwartz proves himself a versatile and generally kick-ass drummer.

The space around the rhythm section is filled in by clean, trebly guitar parts, dense horn harmonies and syncopated lines, light Rhodes electric piano, and analog synth ornamentation. The cohesion of the arrangements and instrumentation makes it easier to digest an album that splits the different between dance floor workouts (“Stay,” “Moments”), dairy-smooth Steely Dan grooves (“That’s Where I’ll Be”), and ambient driving-home-after-a-night-out instrumental jams (“Peterdactyl”). A common misstep in making a dance record is failing to make it to hold up to repeated listens on headphones, or just in venues other than the club. But this is where Chin Chin shines. The songs are varied, and the arrangements have a lot to offer beyond a simple four-on-the-floor dance beat.

The albums weakest point though, and the thing that might prevent it from holding up years down the line is the lyrics. Sure, it may be a mistake to hold a fun-times kinda record accountable for not having literary lyrics, but Chin Chin expands what a dance record can be elsewhere, so why not in this department? I suppose form follows function on a record like this, so we come to expect lines like “Time to let it out/ We’re gonna scream and shout,” “Tonight we’re gonna dip and sway,” or “You and I/ Gonna touch the sky.” But you know, stuff like that will only take you so far, and I found myself getting a little weary of the lyrics about halfway through.

But for all its faults, The Flashing, The Fancing achieves what it sets out to do. The band knows its strengths and uses them to full advantage on nearly every track (give or take a couple of too-long keyboard solos. But hey, these dudes went to music school, what do you expect?), and even the most fun-hating misanthrope would have a tough time resisting its charms.

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Tagged as: Brooklyn, Dance, Funk

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