- Lush indulgent club tracks on the debut 12-inch from the Radiant Love boss.
- The B1 on Byron Yeates' debut EP, Sweat Ur Prayers, is built around a spoken word poem. "What am I avoiding? / I wish I could hold myself / Like the dance holds me / I wish being felt real / Believing is a durational effort / So dreaming is essential," Yeates' collaborator Ruin ruminates. Laid over competing drum patterns and slowly undulating chords, the words fall somewhere between existential dread and angsty comedown. But as the track unfolds, the tone changes: Yeates and co-producer Eoin DJ add bright rave stabs, shifting from hypnotic techno to rave ecstasy as Ruin's tone becomes playful. Sonically and lyrically, "Dreaming Is Essential" moves from the metaphysical—pondering what it means to be—to the phenomenological, an exploration of how being feels. Sweat Ur Prayers is all about this interplay, moving between the psychic and the bodily over three cuts of techno, downtempo and rave party starters.
"Dreaming Is Essential" could be a manifesto for Radiant Love, the party-turned-label started by Yeates in 2019. Only five releases in, the label has become synonymous with a brand of hedonistic club tunes that have taken the dance music world by storm (Andrew Ryce went so far as to use the coinage "Radiant Love-core" in a recent review). For those familiar with the larger Radiant Love universe, whose cosmology includes labels like Isla, Step Ball Chain and Planet Euphorique, the two versions of the title track on Sweat Ur Prayers will be the most familiar. The original has a bassy, didgeridoo-style warble and fierce kick drums, while the Lawerence Lee remix adds in some trancey chords and breakdowns for extra drama.
Yeates moves in a different direction on the other two cuts. While there are shared elements across Radiant Love releases—progressive house motifs, ambiguously sexual lyrics—the style is more of an aesthetic than a particular genre. "Dreaming Is Essential," for example, is understated, hypnotic techno, minimal compared to previous releases by EOO or Maara. The best track here is also the slowest, the downtempo "Waves." Filled with aquatic bleeps and bloops, a stuttering break and some inspirational vocals, it still sounds as indulgent as anything else in the label's back catalog, like reading a self-help book that recommends a healthy diet of brown butter, unfiltered cigarettes and psilocybin. What makes Sweat Ur Prayers such an essential debut is how Yeates builds these vibrant (and illicit) soundscapes while also pushing the Radiant Love sound beyond the standard trance revival templates.
Tracklist01. Sweat Ur Prayers
02. Waves
03. Byron Yeates, Eoin DJ & Ruin - Dreaming Is Essential
04. Sweat Ur Prayers (Lawrence Lee Remix)