Breakbot: "Baby I’m Yours (Aeroplane remix)"

Sports psychologists often counsel athletes to set attainable goals and pursue them aggressively—the logic being that not venturing outside one’s comfort zone allows the athlete to maximize his or her chance of success and create a confidence-boosting positive feedback loop in the process. Golf guru Bob Rotella calls this strategy “conservative strategy, cocky swing” and flamboyant Tour players like Phil Mickelson confirm or, less often, disprove its efficacy every time they get into a pressure situation.

Of course, creating an effective piece of recorded music takes a different skill set than making par at the Road Hole, but the outlook of Belgian duo Aeroplane seems to come straight from the Rotella playbook. In more than two years since the release of debut 12” their output, spanning across both original material and a series of well-received remixes, has been a model of consistency and restraint. With a sonic palette largely confined to italo/nu-disco synthesizers, funky guitars, and woozy bass lines, they have produced track after track of practical, sensible dance music that appealed to both critics and consumers. Big Dancefloor Moments, to the extent they existed at all, arrived only after minutes of slow buildup, inevitably to great effect. If nothing else, Stephen Fasano and Vito De Luca knew and worked within their limitations.

With internet chatter indicating a different musical direction for their long-awaited debut album, the appearance of a reggae-inspired original track on April’s BBC Essential Mix, and a recently-announced breakup, Vito’s take on Breakbot’s “Baby I’m Yours” (apparently, Stephen has been checked out for a while) is, if not a nail in the coffin for the Aeroplane aesthetic in general, evidence that its longstanding penchant for restraint has disappeared. From the beginning the atmosphere is a tad dramatic, especially compared to the easygoing Breakbot original, but the first half of the song sticks to standard Aeroplane ideas and tracks the original chord progression note for note. When the vocal line drops out, though, the bottom also drops out on Aeroplane’s assiduously cultivated self-control. Recalling Radiorama’s “Vampires” from 1986, which was included on the BBC mix, bells clang, thunder and lightning strike, and echoing synth punches swoosh across the mix. It’s as if all those ideas, all that stuff they had been holding back for years were exploding in an over-the-top eruption of suppressed DJ id. It’s totally over the top and will alienate many or most of Aeroplane’s longtime fans. It will also create some new ones—the question is how many. Time will tell whether this new direction is an inspired gamble or just another Mickelson whiff.