Major Lazer: "Jump Up (Thom Yorke remix)"

I know Thom Yorke’s style. You know it, your mother knows it, Chris Martin knows it. Yet, unlike similar luminaries—um, Bob Dylan? Big Boi?—there’s a sense, especially over the course of The Eraser (2006) and In Rainbows (2007), that there’s a kind of atom-splitting division happening, that he’s not just too cool for guitars anymore, but ascended to some level where such crudities are irrelevant. So what happens when you get a particle physicist to fine-tune the trajectory of a beach ball? Don’t get me wrong, Diplo and Switch are capable of some real transcendent stuff, the former’s work on Fear And Loathing In Hunts Vegas (2008) Exhibit One. But in general, their oeuvre is like an eternally rebuffed short loop from a 2 Live Crew music video, as if coming at a party from a million different angles will somehow call forth hidden meaning. You can’t enjoy a party and mourn the brief tragedy of it at the same time, though, and most of the time they just slip into the former.

So what does Prof. Yorke do to “Jump Up,” a nondescript piece of dancehall filler from Major Lazer’s visually iconic, musically scattershot debut Guns Don’t Kill People…Lazers Do (2009)? He gives Diplo a taste of his own medicine, coming at Leftside & Supahype’s overcaffeinated, in-the-red flow with low tones, nearly dubstep beats, and those kids from “15 Step.” While the chopped-and-screwed ache of Hunts Vegas’ “Rollin’” isn’t on hand, Yorke’s take makes the athletic, unbreakable bounce of the vocals seem all the more impressive, like a pair of buff apocalypse survivors still working out in the burned-up shell of their local Bally’s, dutifully going through the motions and reps because they know nothing else. It’s not exactly profound, but it makes Major Lazer’s overwhelming melange of poor taste and hot sound seem human, and if that’s what science can do for a militaristic dance party, good for science. And Thom Yorke.