Review
Genre and Mood
Matzak lends his beat to Forensic on Not safe for work, an electronic track with hip-hop at its centre. The feelings named here follow its two readings: playful and confident, after Resident Advisor’s “strutting beat” and “relentlessly rolling vocals”; provocative, after a title that warns the listener before a note has played, and after PopMatters, which heard only posing.
Song Summary
Not Safe for Work is the eighth of ten tracks on Bring Me the Moon, the second album by the French producer Matzak, released by Boxer Recordings on 26 April 2010, and runs just over six minutes. It is one of the album’s guest tracks: Resident Advisor, announcing the record, described a hip-hop troupe called Forensic whose relentlessly rolling vocals meet Matzak’s strutting beat and plinking synths, and noted that the track references Skeletor, the cartoon villain. The sources give no lyric beyond that, and no names for the members of Forensic.
Musical Breakdown
The sources describe the track’s parts, not its order, so this breakdown does not invent a structure.
Main Section
Three things carry the track by Resident Advisor’s account: the vocals, rolling and relentless; the beat, which struts; and synthesizers that plink, short and bright rather than sustained. Listen for how the rapped lines and the synth notes trade space.
Outro
How the six minutes end is not described in the sources.
Concepts in Focus
A <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/featured-artist/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“featured-artist” title=“A guest performer credited on another artist’s track, usually as “feat.”: a rapper’s verse, a singer’s hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.“>featured artist is a guest credited on another artist’s track, and the “feat.” in this title is the whole idea of the song. Bring Me the Moon is a producer’s album with guests: Resident Advisor counted vocals from the Californian singer Tori and the French band Sourya on three of its ten tracks, besides Forensic here. Handing a track to a hip-hop crew rather than a singer changes what the beat is for: it becomes a stage for a flow.
The synthesizer need not play long chords or pads. Plinking synths, as Resident Advisor heard them, are short, percussive notes, closer to a rhythm part than to a melody, and PopMatters credited the whole album with top-notch production in which every sound is clean and clear.
Artistic Context
Matzak is the French producer Nicolas Matuszczak. Resident Advisor traced his path from melodic tech-house like that of Border Community, through ravier records on the Citizen imprint of Vitalic (heard here in Vitalic – You Prefer Cocaine), to the moody, ethnic style of African Roots in 2008 and a twelve-inch for Kompakt Extra the following year. It called Bring Me the Moon his biggest stylistic leap yet, ranging from atmospheric club sounds to jaunty techno-pop and string-soaked minimalism.
Impact and Reception
PopMatters, rating the album 5 out of 10, found it scattered and singled out the “ridiculous posing” of Not Safe for Work, while Resident Advisor’s announcement, written before the release, had described the same track through its rolling vocals and strutting beat. Listen and decide which of them you agree with.
