Alan Walker, K-391, Tungevaag, Mangoo – PLAY

“ONE HUNDRED PERCENT UNBRIDLED ALAN WALKER”

Tim: Here, a track that, despite being a reworking of one from twenty years back, and having four credited producers, is 100% unbridled Alan Walker. With a VHS filter applied, because we’ve not had enough of those recently.

Tom: You’re not wrong, that is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT UNBRIDLED ALAN WALKER. Not just the synth pads, but the rhythms they’re in, the vocal quality of the singer, and the vocal chop-ups during the middle eight.

Tim: Somehow, I’d never really figured out how a dance track can have multiple names on it – like, it’s one guy at a computer, how does it work? Fortunately, we’ve a video that explains it nicely, and suddenly I’m thinking ‘of course it’s like that, that makes total sense’.

Tom: It involves floaty purple things. Of course it does.

Tim: We’ve three videos so far – this one from Alan and another from each of K and Martin, each telling a slightly separate story about how things started happening – it’s a rather nice thing, not least for, yep, all the floaty purple things.

The tune’s the main part, though, with the main hook coming from Mangoo’s 1999 track Eurodancer, and pretty much everything else being Alan’s trademark beeps and bloops. And, well, you know what I’m going to think about it, because like I said at the top, it’s 100% Alan’s sound. You like Alan, you like the song; you don’t, you don’t. And I do.

Tom: It’s an odd one, isn’t it? He needs to keep his sound fresh and updated, or people will get bored — but if he does that, it doesn’t sound like an Alan Walker Track any more.

Tim: Though actually, one thing from that video: do you reckon Alan ever brings his hood down?

Tom: Never mind that, what kind of a DJ name is “Mangoo”?