Olga Bell: "Randomness"
Olga Bell‘s 2014 album, Край, was a tribute to her native small-town Russia, which is to say that it was also—at least from the perspective of her adopted homeland, the U.S.—a tribute to the margins. (The title is Russian for “edge” or “limit.”) But her new single “Randomness” is just the opposite. It aims squarely at the center: of the dancefloor, of popular consciousness. Where Край availed itself of drones and chamber instruments and eerie choral arrangements, “Randomness” adopts the tempo and rhythmic cadence and sing-songy vocal repetitions of house music at its poppiest and most universalist. In a way, it’s as much an ethnographical project as her debut album, says Bell: “I didn’t feel like I had license to go there until I processed lots of dance music, practiced a lot of actual dancing and studied the cultural streams that eventually produced the Top 40/MTV dance hits I remember from my childhood (Crystal Waters, Black Box, Robyn S), from my first years in the USA.”
But one of the things that makes “Randomness” so charming is the way it deviates from its inspirations. Where ’90s dance-pop was sleek and efficient, “Randomness” is a little bit clunky: Its piano-house chords sound dissonant and a little drunk here, and the sawtooth bass melody is just a hair more boisterous than is called for—particularly when matched with Bell’s own quiet, conspiratorial coo, and the silvery trance arpeggios that bring to mind the Knife‘s Silent Shout. The song sounds a little like a tribute to early ’90s dance-pop written by someone who hasn’t actually heard those songs in a long time—like a copy based on the memory of a memory. It’s a strange, fanciful kind of mutant pop, with the most fortuitous kind of randomness built right into the equation.
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