Review
Genre and Mood
Slove and Sarah Rebecca made Flash - Radio Edit the short form of a seductive electro-pop song, alluring in its vocal and euphoric in its hooks: textura heard the full version as a burning five minutes of pop decadence.
Song Summary
Flash is a song by the French duo Slove. Léo Hellden and Julien Barthe wrote and produced it; Sarah Rebecca Krebs sings it, and her Last.fm biography credits her with the lyrics. The single came out on Pschent Music on 27 September 2011, three weeks before the album Le Danse. Vanyaland heard seductive electro-pop led by sultry bedroom vocals, and textura called it the album’s highlight, Slove at its melodic best, raised up by Krebs’ voice and soaring hooks.
Musical Breakdown
Main Section
No source we found walks through the song section by section, so this page describes less than usual. textura describes the typical Slove song as built on a pulsing bass line, distorted buzzsaw guitar and washes of synth, with a guest voice on top, and names Flash as the best of them. The radio edit runs three and a half minutes, against the album version’s five.
Concepts in Focus
A radio edit is the version a label cuts for airplay. Here it is the single itself: the album’s five minutes trimmed to about three and a half, the length a radio station or a playlist expects. The edit keeps the song and gives up some of the room around it.
Sarah Rebecca is credited as a main artist next to Slove, but she plays the role of 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 in a producer duo’s project: Le Danse spread its vocals across several guest singers, and textura notes how much the character of each voice pushes the music in its own direction. On Flash that voice is the song.
The music video, directed by Florent Chenet and Liam Engle and was released by Pschent in October 2011. Two years later Vanyaland was still writing about its pastel colours and Krebs among the bedsheets, and asked whether it was the sexiest video ever made.
Artistic Context
Slove is Léo Hellden and Julien Barthe, whom Vanyaland describes as well known in French electronic music. textura suggested hearing them, on their debut album, as a cross of The Notwist, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Primal Scream. Krebs was born in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where she learned to sing gospel hymns before she could read, and later settled in Paris as a singer and composer.
Impact and Reception
Her biography names Flash as the hit single that made Krebs known. It is here for its slow-burning allure, a pop song that takes its time even in its shortest form. Play it late, with the lights low.
