- Tech house with a twist.
- Taylor Freels has always made classic-sounding house, but he's recently been digging into a different era. Sometime around 2017, he switched gears from lush and melodic to swung and minimalistic. (The records he posts on his goldmine of an Instagram have gotten weirder, too.) His last few releases (for Voyage, Tartelet and Kalahari Oyster Cult) are the best of his career. Metroid, his latest, adds to that streak.
The title track is the choice cut. It throws an old-school organ vamp above a tight drum loop, with liberal hand percussion and pads that make you feel like you're sailing through the sky. It's precise but breezy, a quality shared by the other highlight, "Orbital," which coasts on big chord swells that dissolve into the taut groove. "Polaris," which is more layered, works with psychedelic loops the same way. That leaves "Static Dancer," whose tireless thrust is a little too big room for my tastes. The rest of Metroid shows a producer zeroing in on what he does best: tech house with a twist.
TracklistA1 Metroid
A2 Polaris
B1 Static Dancer
B2 Orbital