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CHIC's "Risqué"
CHIC's signature sound - in which mannequin voices issue
cryptic telegrams above a contoured bass, an agitated guitar and unusually
light drumming - is one of the most evocative in all of disco, because it
dispenses with such stock ingredients as heavy-breathing eroticism and synthesized
gimmickry. It's airy and blank, spare and sometimes forbiddingly austere.
Though the sextet's writer-arranger-producers, bassist Bernard Edwards and
guitarist Nile Rodgers, claim that entertainment is CHIC's sole purpose,
the best tunes here reverberate with repressed cosmic anxieties. The key
verse of "Good Times,"
Risqué's near-masterpiece, professes: "A rumor has it
that it's getting late/Time marches on-just can't wait/The clock keeps turning-why
hesitate/You silly fool - you can't change your fate." In this highstepping
disco anthem and again in the more trancelike "My
Feet Keep Dancing," Edwards and Rodgers suggest that the end of
the good times may be at hand. Love songs like "Can't
Stand to Love You" are similarly ambivalent, since the protagonists
appear perpetually addled and adrift in a disco fog. Finally, CHIC seems
to question the value of fashion itself: this group's music is even chillier
and more emotively ambiguous than the high-gloss haute couture photography
that inspired it. |
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