Bonkers - Best Served on a Dancefloor

On first listening this didn’t amount to much at All Action No Plot Towers. Puzzled looks were exchanged, as music scribes silently urged Bonkers to edge back onto the well-trod dance path from which it was wildly veering. In fact, such sentiments remained in place after the second, third and fourth listenings. I suspect that if the patrons of AANP Towers had not recently set foot in London nightspots, Bonkers would still be greeted with a weary shake of the head.

However, come a JD-and-coke fuelled midnight hour, on a heaving London dance floor, and the relentless bass of Bonkers slips seamlessly into the pantheon of cracking dance-floor winners. This may not be at the cutting-edge of MC mastery, but it’s a ruddy good adventure in the land of foot-tapping pop, and for that Mr Rascal should take a bow.

Actually, it’s probably Armand van Helden who deserves the plaudits. The lyrics are typically inane, and delivered with what one assumes is self-deprecating irony, but ‘tis the music that makes this tick – and as this is a collaboration between both D. Rascal and A. van Helden Esquire, one imagines that the former took charge of lyrics, while the latter oversaw melodies and beat combos. Bonkers - definitely one at which funky shapes can be made – nay, hurled – with gay abandon. Cracking stuff on a dancefloor; less so, perhaps, on an iPod in a tube carriage.