Review
Genre and Mood
Brodka’s Dancing Shoes (Kamp! Remix) is electro-pop pushed towards house: the Łódź trio Kamp! keep the Polish singer’s English-language song and rebuild the music under it. Where one reviewer found the original charming, almost girlish, he heard the remix as strong and danceable, and it carries itself with the confidence and the underground glamour that another critic named in it.
Song Summary
Dancing Shoes is one of two new songs on LAX, the EP Brodka recorded at the Red Bull Studio in Los Angeles with the producer Bartosz Dziedzic and released digitally on 30 May 2012 on Kayax. The EP paired each new song with two remixes, and Kamp!’s version of Dancing Shoes became one of its two singles, next to Varsovie. Shazam credits the song to Monika Brodka, Bartosz Dziedzic and Quentin Carenzo.
Musical Breakdown
No source times the remix part by part; what the reviewers describe is how it differs from the original.
Main Section
Porcys heard a few drastic but mainly arrangement-based changes, enough to turn what it called a rather uninteresting track into a potential radio hit that keeps its underground glamour. Fizzz-Reviews heard interesting, somewhat house-like music added by Kamp!, and Brodka’s voice sounding more decisive over it. Porcys also hears the delicate, vanilla glints of Kamp!’s own single Cairo.
Music Video
The official video followed in October 2012; Brodka invited friends to make it and to appear in it, as Jazzsoul.pl reported.
Concepts in Focus
A remix rebuilds a recording from its parts, and this one shows how far that can go while the song stays recognisable: the vocal and the melody remain, while the arrangement and the beat change around them. It also became a single in its own right, one of the two that promoted LAX. Compare how Filatov & Karas turned Imany’s song into a dance-floor hit in Imany, Filatov & Karas – Don’t Be So Shy (Filatov & Karas Remix).
The somewhat house-like music the reviewer heard points to the house groove, the steady dance pulse that French house brought into Kamp!’s melodic synth-pop. The music video, made with friends, gave the remix its own images.
Artistic Context
Brodka won the Polish Idol in 2004, and her 2010 album Granda was acclaimed in Poland and abroad; she is known for moving between styles. Kamp! are a Łódź trio whose sound Polish Wikipedia describes as melodic synth-pop shaped by the new wave of the 1980s, French house and chillwave. Their debut album came out in November 2012, the year of this remix. LAX came out on CD, DVD and vinyl on 4 December 2012, at fans’ request.
Impact and Reception
The remix did not chart, but the critics who wrote about LAX singled it out: Fizzz-Reviews found it better than the original, and csgmblog called it just as outstanding as Varsovie, the song that won Brodka the 2013 Fryderyk for Song of the Year. Its life went on: in 2017 a version by Kamp! and Brodka together appeared on the Męskie Granie 2017 compilation. Put your own dancing shoes on.
