Always felt this tune by Dev, "In the Dark" - my fave single of whatever year that was - was a UK garage flashback / rip-off.
And now I realise that the main reason that it has that association for me is the parping synth-horn vamp that comes in at 32 seconds.
Not only are those horns horny, the song itself is about being uncontrollably horny.
At this point Dev had the sexiest singing voice in the world, simply on the basis of her sampled cameo in "Like A G6" and her one solo hit "In The Dark", which was constantly on the radio in LA
"In The Dark" is from an era when producers were doing starting to do amazing things * in terms of an architecture of harmonies and multiple interlocking vocal parts, texturizing of backing vocals and what I would call side-vocals - or even aside-vocals: a kind of melodic equivalent to the adlib in rap later on. Working in jitters and stammers and mechanistic syncopations. And voice-as-pure-FX - like the slithery-rubbery vocal ripples in "In The Dark"
It all comes from Dev but with gimmick-attuned producers working with her (the Cataracs in this case), it adds up to the ultimate in ear-candy. An overflowing panoply of hooks - just so many "good bits" that stick in your head,
Other examples of this combo of personality and processing would be Ke$ha songs like "Tik Tok" and especially "Backstabber."
The latter is not the work of the evil Dr but David Gamson, as in Scritti Politti - a fact that just added savor to my enjoyment of the song.
"Backstabber" features an awesome horn part, as it happens, but it's not UKG style - more throwback campy, almost Casino Royale / Herb Alpert. Possibly a sample, as opposed to synthi-horn played on a keyboard.
I should imagine the vocal arrangement virtuosity emerging at that time owes a lot to the late 2000s release by Antares of the Harmony Engine, a studio tool that made it easy to multiple the singer's voice, stack it, spectralize it, situate it within the sound-space of the recording...
An orchestration of the voice alone, even before you get to all the other things going on in the track
Like those horny horns in "In The Dark"
* Yeah, yeah, ABBA did this kind of thing in "Knowing Me, Knowing You" and so many other tunes... and Missy Elliott in a different way. And then there was this from 2005, before the Harmony Engine came on the market
