The Explorers: "Longest Night"

They may not sink their flags into uncharted continents but the Explorers, it’s safe to say, are going places. The first place they’ve been is the Future Music cover disc, picked from a long line of Myspace hopefuls to become featured in two separate editions. Take that, Sir Edmund Hillary: it might not be exploring in the classical sense, with Gore-Tex, trusts funds, and shooting your own ponies, but there’s still a sense the Sheffield duo are firmly on track, zeroing in on the red-dotted treasure chest. OK, so their route and background might be different to most—touring rock drummer and producer of horror films team up to make glitterball pop—but Jez Dennis and Rob Bannister have the muscle to wow any doubters, and echo the galavanting of Francis Drake when he blew up the Spanish for potatoes.

Or maybe Explorers just means the old River Phoenix film, where kids used dreams and an Apple IIc to help get a dustbin into orbit. The story on “Longest Night” is a little less complex—bloke half in love tries to dance away his woes at a wine bar, no-one notices, bloke goes home alone—but the music shares the movie’s brand of eighties finesse; the kind of pumping, Thatcherite disco that bank robbers like to shuffle to. It’s not a wholly original sound, and the Explorers are the first to acknowledge this (“Back home and the TV’s on / Looks like another re-run,” groans Bannister, slinking between 16-bit bass), but they’ve sharpened the picture to 1080p, every extra’s number plate now readable. The barely-suppressed euphoric Casios copy Air France’s No Way Down so effectively they could kill the original and move in with its children, while Jez Dennis’ cocktail of programming and guitars coats the verses in dance music’s ancestor. The resulting cool but sociable thud plays nicely against Bannister’s self-hatred, which sees him sulking for failing to go home with anything more suggestive than a phone number (“Night’s out and I miss the train / Looks like I’m on my own again / If you call me I would answer / Makes me walk a little faster”). You almost want to cheer him up with the music his misery’s about to father. “Cheer up, son,” you want to say as you pat him. “This is the best longest night since Vas Blackwood held up a supermarket.

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