Recloose - Saturday Night Manifesto

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  • The new four-tracker from Recloose picks up right where the material collected last year on Rush Hour's Early Works compilation left off. All the hallmarks of Recloose of yore are here: squelchy synthesizer bass, gleaming Detroit keys, luminous sample stabs, broken beats and careening drum machines. Indeed, "Tecumseh" may be the toughest thing he's ever done, with fast, hard-charging drum programming and a gnarled bassline that growls like a propeller plane flying low over the mountains, climbing and diving with no warning. (Other producers would do well to learn from the amount of movement that Recloose manages to stuff inside his jagged groove.) The handclaps alone are awe-inspiring, ringed with haloes of tight delay. "Parquet" is closer in spirit to "Maui's Lament" or "Can't Take It," with a quick, loping groove that's full of character, sampled congas squaring off against machined hi-hats and tambourines. Fat, augmented choral samples make the meat of the track, bloody as a perfectly rare steak, marbled with jazzy synthesizer flourishes. What makes it feel so alive is, in part, Recloose's willingness to venture beyond the simpler scales: plenty of artists nod to jazz, but he's one of the few that displays an understanding of how it works. Finally, the downbeat "Electric Sunshine" is a gift to the dreamers, with a lazy groove driven by syncopated handclaps and fluffed up with plucked guitars and a short fragment of vintage soul. Soft chords spread out like sunlight bouncing off revolving doors and dissolve back into shadow, an endless cycle of blurry vectors chalked in summer pastels. Like I said, one for the dreamers.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Electric Sunshine A2 Parquet B1 Tecumseh B2 Tecumseh (Bonus Beats)
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