- Minimal dance music has always had a strained relationship with melody, but a handful of producers—Thomas Melchior, Baby Ford, Barac—have made timeless music by embracing it in their own subtle ways. It's early days yet, but Uruguay's Z@P (no, not Zip) might be another one. Where the music of his peers centres on percussion, basslines, bleeps and blops, Z@P focuses on melody on his new Sonic Utopia EP, all while keeping things complex and functional.
The standouts are "Diamante" and "D-04." The mood is ambiguous across both, but "D-04" retains a strong sense of feeling thanks to a catchy synth riff that ducks in and out while drums chug underneath. "Diamante" is more sombre, built around snappy percussion and a synth that recalls the eerie atmosphere of Spacetravel's "Fragile." Melody can be a double-edged sword, though, and some of the squelchy stabs on "Atomos" and "Dauphine" feel clumsy. Those tracks keep this otherwise outstanding EP from being a knockout.
TracklistA1 Atomos
A2 Diamante
B1 D-04
B2 Dauphine