- I'd call Styles Upon Styles gimmicky if their approach—releasing 12-inches with a 45rpm club jam on one side and a 33rpm experimental track on the other—didn't work so well. It's a good way to stand out, but Styles Upon Styles wouldn't be one of the more interesting labels at the moment if the tunes didn't speak for themselves. Happily, they do.
"Sparkle," the "ash" side of Certain Creatures' debut for the label, treads a path through a murky dystopia. Stuart Argabright's quiet, menacing voice swings from left to right, sounding as though he's creeping up on you. You'll never quite associate the word "sparkle" with glamour again after hearing Argabright stretch it out into a joyless snarl. The momentum only picks up towards the end, with cold synth stabs and a gathering cloud of noise. The "banger," "Bosch," is similarly gloomy but less dramatic, its colliding synth lines underpinned by powerful low-end and gritty, chunky beats.
TracklistA Sparkle feat. Ike Yard
B Bosch