Here With Me - Single

Buy the radio edit, not the extended mix.

     

I am a huge fan of Lasgo. Prior hits were all very well-crafted layered soundscapes with amazing attention to detail.

This new song has some of the same character, but lacks the commitment to the craft so evident in their previous hits. This absence of buy-in is a little painfully evident in the extended version. The radio version is worth picking up, if you like their sound in general, like I do. But spare yourself the extended version's annoying 1:25 of the sort of utterly uninspired build-up that I've come to expect from the vast majority of "extended" cuts in all techno subgenres (64 beats of each "instrument" adding in, repetitive enough to force false confessions from anyone), but which I had never before seen from a leading talent like Lasgo. Disappointing.

I suppose the "extended cut" in general is the modern version of the pre-internet album: back then, we paid for the whole album hoping it was remotely as good as the one or two tunes they played on the radio, only to be disappointed more than half the time. Today, iTunes and the like allow you to prescreen tunes that don't speak to you, but the 1:30 that iTunes samples you is always the middle and best part of the extended cut, and never the mindlessly created 1:30 INTRO slapped onto the front by someone with no interest at all in the project. It's frustrating, because extended versions USED to actually be more music, not some excrucitating deconstruction of the song for a couple minutes, before going into the otherwise identical radio edit. So I keep buying hoping for that, but get burned now more often than not.