Veröffentlicht
Feb 4, 2015Veröffentlicht
February 2015
- One of the Night Slugs crew's strengths is their ability to respond to one another's ideas without collapsing into homogeneity. As Girl Unit, Philip Gamble joined the label with one of its most brazen anthems, 2010's "Wut." But he's since drifted towards the label's increasingly pared-back core aesthetic. 2013 marked the turning point, when Gamble contributed an EP of febrile drum tracks to the Club Constructions series under the name Hysterics. Club Life, its follow-up, broadens and deepens the producer's grasp on the style, but it also distances him from it. While the razor-edged sound palette and wheezing pneumatic grooves of Club Constructions 5 were of a piece with instalments from Helix and Jam City, these four tracks go their own way.
The title track sets the template. It's drums and little else, but their percussive punch is felt at a remove, through a fog of lo-grade saturation and metallic FX. Syncopation remains paramount—"The Ha Dance"'s rolling groove forms the track's spine—but rhythmic thrills are toned down in favour of an endlessly rejuvenating linear churn. If the results are a little too stark, then elsewhere Gamble's deft touches of colour do just the trick. On the excellent "HTRX9," the addition is sparing in the extreme—just a single heatwarped chord, looped and stuttered—but it's still mildly euphoric. "Eye Mask" repeats the same trick to slightly lesser effect. The most surprising of the lot, "Empty"'s introspective Rhodes chords wander into deep house territory. The metallic concussions and loping kicks that have defined many a Night Slugs release remain—but suddenly they're seen in an alluring new light.
TracklistA1 Club Life
A2 HTRX9
B1 Eye Mask
B2 Empty