{"id":44031,"date":"2025-08-16T16:05:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T16:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/16\/kaytranadas-aint-no-damn-way-is-an-airy-amble-through-dance-music-history\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T16:05:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T16:05:13","slug":"kaytranadas-aint-no-damn-way-is-an-airy-amble-through-dance-music-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/16\/kaytranadas-aint-no-damn-way-is-an-airy-amble-through-dance-music-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaytranada’s ‘Ain’t No Damn Way’ Is an Airy Amble Through Dance Music History"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Influential DJ-producer’s latest runs on house and a tweaked version of disco, returning to the crisp, fluttering tracks he made his name on<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\n\tKaytranada<\/a> makes music designed for club systems that can still translate to people who never go out. Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in Montreal, his style is rooted in beat maestros like J Dilla<\/a>, Madlib<\/a>, and Flying Lotus<\/a>. But the warmth of his music is less dusty-analog (a la the first two) and more faded-digital (unlike the 3D maximalism of FlyLo).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tKaytranada has said that Ain\u2019t No Damn Way!<\/em>, his fifth album (counting Kaytramin\u00e9<\/em>, his 2023 collaboration with Amin\u00e9), is a deliberate step back into the DJ-oriented dance tracks that he made his name with \u2014 fluttering, crisp remixes of Janet Jackson<\/a> and Teedra Moses that erupted on dance floors in the mid-2010s, well before his first album, 99.9%<\/em>, in 2016. But while most of Ain\u2019t No Damn Way! <\/em>runs on house beats, it also works as casual listening; it\u2019s an airy amble through dance music history, not a blaring EDM festival or a speedy night out at a Berlin club.<\/p>\n

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\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tThe album\u2019s starter announces its aim: \u201cSpace Invader\u201d is hectic circa-1992 neo-rave, running off a stabbing synth riff, rolling drum machines recalling early Run-DMC, and a repeated vocal hook: \u201cGotta get a word in sometimes.\u201d (It\u2019s funny because it\u2019s true\u2014most of these tracks are instrumentals.) Those rending electronics pop up throughout Ain\u2019t No Damn Way!<\/em>, albeit in more moderate settings, like \u201cHome\u201d\u2014whose bassline is mostly subwoofer dive-bombs \u2014 and \u201cThings.\u201d The latter has an easy lope made menacing by a cartoon-alien zap answered by other machines that caw like birds. It would fit right onto the Miami Vice <\/em>soundtrack \u2014 the TV show, not the film. \u201cTarget Joint\u201d has a bouncy melody encased in bright bursts of electronics that fray at the edges.<\/p>\n

\n\tMuch of Ain\u2019t No Damn Way! <\/em>is <\/em>marinated in disco, albeit a very tweaked version of it. \u201cChampionship\u201d has a muffled \u201cdoot-doot-doot\u201d vocal sample and a gleaming electric-piano part that recall the seventies\u2014but the four-to-the-floor beat feels more contemplative than dance-ready and the producer keeps throwing aural glitches into the works. On \u201cBlackboy, or Shine Your Light for We,\u201d Kaytranada samples disco\u2019s maestro of plushness, Barry White<\/a>, but he manipulates White\u2019s strings to give them a newly melancholy tinge. In Kaytranada\u2019s hands, disco is anything but a straightforward celebration.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n


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Influential DJ-producer’s latest runs on house and a tweaked version of disco, returning to the crisp, fluttering tracks he made his name on Kaytranada…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":44032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop","article","has-excerpt","has-avatar","has-author","has-date","has-comment-count","has-category-meta","has-read-more","thumbnail-"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}