- When MJ Cole's "Sincere" came out, South London's Guy and Howard Lawrence were just three and six years old, respectively. Maybe it's that generational distance that has allowed them to replicate the fizzy vibes of UK garage at its most effervescent in the music they record as Disclosure. In the spirit of their buoyant, turbo-charged remix of Jessie Ware's "Running," their new record, their first for Greco-Roman, imagines a world where garage never bloated and burned out, but remained balanced on the knife's edge between underground edge and pop froth.
It's giddy stuff: "Boiling" pits Sinead Harnett's wonderfully warm vocals against finger snaps, lanky hi-hats and shiver-inducing synth chords; it sounds a little like a more ecstatic SBTRKT. There are no singers credited to "What's In Your Head" and "Lividup," but both are suffused in vocals. "What's In Your Head" suggests the bluesy tenor of Basement Jaxx's "Fly Life," but crisper and cleaner; "Lividup" takes the choppy vocal samples of acts like XXXY and Hot City and slows it to a pneumatic 115 beats per minute. If the latter doesn't turn up on several Ibiza-themed compilations this summer, I'll be surprised, and I don't mean that disparagingly.
"Control," featuring Ria Ritchie, might be the best of the bunch. The sample acrobatics are straight out of Todd Edwards, and the bleepy melody sounds like a particularly rose-tinted version of Abe Duque's "What Happened"; the skipping groove feels effortless, and the suggestive background ambience just pulls you deeper in. Balancing between swollen, reverb-soaked passages and a finely distilled chorus, it's easy to see why they titled it "Control."
Tracklist 01. Boiling feat. Sinead Harnett
02. What's In Your Head
03. Lividup
04. Control feat. Ria Ritchie