- Colorful club music that twists ballroom house into new shapes.
- Ballroom house forms the basis for a lot of exciting club music experiments. Producers like Divoli S'vere, BE3k and Quest?onmarc have twisted the ballroom template into new shapes, some sticking closer to the source than others. It's not just about "Ha Dance" samples, either. There's something about the rhythmic logic of ballroom beats—never smooth, always angular—with lots of stops and starts and explosions of sound. Like the contestants who walk in balls, the music is vying for your attention, and it refuses to be ignored. On XP, we meet a producer and vocalist who uses ballroom house as her jumping-off point, though its influence isn't always obvious. Sometimes she only gestures at it subtly.
There are three vocal tracks on here, and the most memorable of them is "Musical Chairs," which is a song about promoters who have no idea what they're doing. Delish cut her teeth DJing and performing on the Philadelphia drag ball circuit, and here she raps with exasperation about the bad gigs she's had along the way. The beat is peppered with classic "Ha" samples, but there's also a wiggly bassline synth that makes for a welcome splash of color.
"Identity," an R&B-flavored house instrumental that almost sounds like Project Pablo, has a lot of nice melodic hues too. "Sandy" has a similar kit of quirky synth sounds, though it drifts along at an easygoing 110 BPM. The only track that doesn't quite hit the mark is "Wasted," which is a passable, but not memorable, R&B tune with smoky vocals reminiscent of Fatima. Taken as a whole, XP is still a clever statement and a nice addition to the canon of ballroom and vogue-inspired club music.
TracklistA1 Wasted
A2 Identity
A3 Musical Chairs
B1 Sandy
B2 Bring A Friend
B3 Bring A Friend (Instrumental)