- Over the course of five years, Irish producer Gary Caruth has zeroed in on what he wants to accomplish with the music he makes as Sad City. His first release, Gestures, found mostly experimental uses for a wide array of samples and field recordings, though it was generally beat-centric. Two subsequent EPs honed those ideas for a pretty sound that split the difference between house, ambient and Brainfeeder-style beats. It wouldn't be wrong to say that Caruth's debut album, Shapes In Formation, compiles the best aspects of the Sad City catalog thus far, but there's something about it that goes beyond mere linear growth. Across the album's seven tracks (ten on the digital edition), it would seem that the now Glasgow-based producer has turned a corner and found his niche. This is deep, subtly deconstructed house music, with its feet in a classic tradition and its head lost in reverie.
As beholden to deep house as Shapes In Formation is, Caruth's enduring love for hip-hop emerges here and there. A head-nodding beat pairs with gentle jazz chords and a full-bodied bass synth in the second half of "Pace, Movements I-IV," and the blend of ideas is entrancing to hear unfold over 11 minutes. "Smoke," with its queasy vocal loops and stuttered skip of a kick drum, is nicely reminiscent of early Flying Lotus, but it also feels too straightforward on an otherwise relaxed, exploratory album.
Among the most club-friendly tracks is "People + Plants," which has a lovely kind of disorienting, blunted sway that recalls Fred P. Likewise, "Steady Jam" piles on the samples for a smoky and soulful groove that sounds barely held together, and is all the more enticing for it. A steady 4/4 rises about halfway through the piece; at first, it's little more than a quiet thud underpinning Caruth's swirl of vocals, piano, bass and hi-hats, but it soon grows into a proper house pulse. Freedom and formlessness are key factors to this music's appeal, so the moments when everything comes together feel special.
Speaking to Scotland's The National, Caruth went into detail about his love for field recordings and music's interaction with outside sounds. "The amalgamation of music with the natural environment is essential to [the listening] experience, and that's something I'm trying to do with my music," he explained. You can sense that much throughout Shapes In Formation, which is often so sparse and meditative that it seems incomplete without, say, the chatter of an audience or the din of a busy street. Like DJ Sprinkles' Midtown 120 Blues, these tracks want to foster specific feelings more than they want to tell a story, and to merge those feelings with the unpredictability of life. Shapes In Formation doesn't always translate well to attentive listening, but when heard out in the world it flourishes.
Tracklist01. Rain Call
02. Pace, Movements I-IV
03. People + Plants
04. Steady Jam
05. Smoke
06. Water
07. Again