- George Fitzgerald's ManMakeMusic imprint is rapidly becoming a reliable source for lesser-known gems. EPs from Leon Vynehall and Trikk so far this year have revealed Fitzgerald's fine ear for idiosyncratic deep house, but Eah, from anonymous newcomer U, sees the label expand its purview well beyond the dance floor. Put simply, this is a record more concerned with the memory of dancing than the act itself. Simultaneously recalling the gauzy hardcore reminiscences of Lone and Samoyed and the broader underground's recent fascination with recollection and nostalgia, these four tracks read like faint glimmers of hope imported from a lost age, caked in neglect and set adrift from context and function.
The title track is the finest and the most fully-formed, a gorgeous piece of agile, throbbing house whose blissful titular sample, sliding drunkenly out of tune and obscured behind sprays of muck, nonetheless sounds like a window onto an east London warehouse rave circa 1991. The remaining three tracks are striking but frustratingly sketch-like in form. "Evil Spirits" is more pensive, its beat and cloudy piano samples obscured behind a similarly thick patina of decay. "Heaven," meanwhile, is pretty, swung breakbeat house; though the way those bell-like pads swerve and lurch off-key cannily upsets its sense of embracing warmth.
Of course, it would be difficult to walk these hushed corridors without bumping into Burial at some point—fortunately "Haunted," with its pairing of plangent synth tones and a downtrodden, melismatic a cappella, is the only openly derivative track here. As the EP's track titles indicate, Eah addresses concepts of haunting, loss and the unattainability of some idealised rave nirvana. They're hardly underexplored ideas in this day and age, but U's approach is a pleasingly singular one.
TracklistA1 EAH
A2 Evil Spirits
B1 Haunted
B2 Heaven