Girl Unit - Club Rez

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  • The track you've been waiting for doesn't come until the end of Girl Unit's new EP, so let's start at the beginning. "Ensemble (Club Mix)" isn't too far off from labelmate Jam City with its grime-friendly basslines and skronky synths, until it fades out into a lush synth section in endorphin overdrive. "Double Take" is like "I.R.L." MK II, with exaggerated rhythms slamming down into a vacuum chamber of reverb, but even that tails off into a coda of blissful Timbaland-isms. Notice a pattern here? Nearly every track is drizzled with luminescent syrup, from the funk pastiche of "Plaza" (with its flashbang synth flares) or especially "Rezday," which explores tinny bombast via artificial horn fanfares and regal melodies. As if to wash the taste of listeners' mouths, "Cake Boss" is unforgiving and harsh, broken up by the occasional 808 cowbell that's melted down and molded into a melody. Track six is the one, though. The funny thing about "Club Rez" is it doesn't have much of a conventional structure: it goes from zero to 60 in, well, 60, bursting into the same nearly-parodic euphoria as "Wut"—imagine ten stacked synthesizers all screaming in overheated agony at their highest octave. The track pulls back into squirrely build-up mode twice, an unbearable level of tension before it simply peters out in glowstick glory, muscles weary—it never quite reaches flashpoint, holding itself at a plateau of captured bliss like a bee buzzing frantically inside a mason jar. Even though Girl Unit is working with mostly the same sounds he was two years ago, he sounds more relevant than ever here. It could just be good timing, or that he remains the same ingeniously innovative songwriter, but Club Rez is yet another victory for the young producer.
  • Tracklist
      A Ensemble (Club Mix) B1 Cake Boss B2 Plaza C1 Double Take C2 Rezday D Club Rez
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