This all sounds a bit mental. For a start Orlando Higgenbottom sounds more like the name of a Harry Potter character rather than a totally cool dance music producer. But these eccentric characteristics are just part of why he’s so brilliant.
Hailed by Annie Mac, Zane Lowe and Nick Grimshaw, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (or TEED as he’s respectively known) is roaring onto the electro dance scene. And he’s creating a storm. With 60k+ reviews on soundcloud in his first week, he’s been swiftly called in for ‘remix duty’ as one reviewer put it, beginning with Lady Gaga’s ‘Marry the Night’. And he’s just getting started. As he nears the end of his sold out UK tour, his summer will be spent playing prime time slots at Bestival and Rockness and a six stop tour of Germany.
Far from prehistoric, his style is an evolutionary combination of electro beats with melancholic lyrics, a similar genre-defying sound like Passion Pit, Cassius and the more recent Azari and iii. His upcoming single, ‘Tapes and Money’ can only be described as ‘a total tune’. Beginning with a blast of synth riffs, some slinky beats and his deadpan vocals similar to those of Hot Chip quickly hit in. It moves fast, building up layers until it hits a kaleidoscopic chorus. Then he pauses, just for a moment, creating that tingling suspense, before beginning quietly again, until it bursts into an explosion of trippy synth riffs. It’s a track that keeps quietly nudging you to dance. He’s far from going extinct. In fact, I reckon he’s just getting started in the ever evolving whirlwind of electronic dance.
Tapes and Money is released on the 2nd April 2012
Fran Preston
