First Listen: tenek--"Blinded By You"

Give me 30 seconds and I'll make you a tenek fan.

"Blinded by You" is the new single from tenek, the English duo of Peter Steer and Geoff Pinckney, and if you can make the 30-second mark of this song and you aren't nodding your head or tapping your foot/hand/pencil, then you've got no business listening to synth music. If you make it past 60 seconds and you aren't trying to clear some room to dance, then you may as well ask six of your mates to pick up your casket & carry you to the nearest hole.

This is the sort of pulsing, driving, infectious club track that takes me back 20 years to the heyday of my early 20's when I ministered to the masses from my dancefloor pulpit. And yet, the sound isn't dated; it's fresh and current while being comfortably familiar and instantly an essential part of your iPod's rotation. Taking a drive? Pop this into the car audio system and hope the police aren't running radar. Taking a run through the park? Listen to this and take a minute off your best time. Working out at the gym? This will burn a couple hundred extra calories for you.

And that's just the single mix. (But wait! There's more!)

The past few years, I've been increasingly disappointed with the sad state of remixes, with hastily thrown-together rubbish being churned out by the Flavor Of The Moment DJ and containing virtually none of the original track. Not so with tenek. The single contains the remix "Designed For Dancing", eight glorious minutes of beats put together by Shaun Brooks, the resident engineering genius at tenek's Toffeetones label. Brooks has singlehandedly revived the lost art of the extended dance mix, adding beats while still maintaining the body and sound of the original track.

Another treat on the single is an actual B-side track that's not some throwaway extra song that nobody wanted and relegated to purgatory on a single. "Synchronise" has a bass-heavy edgy energy guaranteed to garner club play on its own merits and will make a great crowd singalong anthem at a packed show.

Over all, if this is any indication of what we can expect when the full "On The Wire" cd drops in September, the next 3 months will be worth the wait. You can pre-order the single via the Toffeetones website right now or wait till the July5th release date.