- Across four vinyl releases, Manchester's meandyou. label has made a beeline for a very specific corner of the dance floor. It's that spot where a run-of-the-mill club transforms into a moody netherworld, dark and enigmatic but strangely comforting. Named for a venue where meandyou. have thrown parties, The Bookbinders follows on neatly from the label's previous compilation EPs. It's a mixture of soupy house tracks and beatless numbers, each giving little away but possessing a strange magnetism.
Workshop's Even Tuell opens the record, cementing a relationship dating back to meandyou01. The careful percussion and single glimmering chord of "Boys Truth" amount to little at first, but after eight minutes they build to a real potency. A newcomer to the label, Sensu provides the EP's other house track, though calling "Sigmon" house stretches its definition. Its beat might have been assembled from vinyl crackle and a drum machine that's seen better days; it slouches along, slow and heavy, while thin chords scud uncertainly behind it. It sounds like dance music on the verge of collapsing into dust.
Two beatless tracks are supplied by familiar meandyou faces. Sul's "Does It For Andy" is four minutes of claggy drone, simple but satisfying. Fabric sculpts thick dub chords into an uneven sludge on "Pink Grid"; squint and there's a downtempo groove in there. It's meandering at first, but there's a payoff, in the form of a wave of glittering arps. As ever with meandyou, patience is rewarded.
TracklistA1 Even Tuell - Boys Truth
A2 Sul - Does It For Andy
B1 Sensu - Sigmon
B2 Fabric - Pink Grid