Harlem Shake

Thirty-two seconds of buildup, one lion roar, and a bass drop that colonized the internet for a season. Baauer's "Harlem Shake" is a trap instrumental — Brooklyn producer, Dutch-house lineage, Southern rap drum programming — assembled from a pitched-down vocal sample ("con los terroristas"), skittering hi-hat triplets, and a sub-bass so low it reads as physical pressure rather than pitch. There is no vocal narrative, no chorus, barely a structure: the track is a machine for delivering one moment of release, and everything before that moment exists only to withhold it. What made it a phenomenon was the meme format it accidentally provided — one person dancing alone, then a hard cut to a room full of bodies in costume — which turned the drop into a punchline with perfect comic timing. That the song bore no relation to the actual Harlem shake, a Harlem street dance from the eighties, became its own minor cultural controversy. Stripped of the video, what remains is genuinely well-made club music: the way the sub swells and retreats, the sinister brass stab, the way the whole thing ends abruptly without resolution. Best encountered at high volume in a dark room, or never again, depending on how much of 2013 you spent online.