[Click here for soundtrack]
We are witnessing a movement. A paradigm shift in music if you will. In 2011, SBTRKT started an electro-soul wave that was quickly capitalized on by Disclosure. It was shades of electronica maturing into something more accessible and not just something you get wasted and head-bang to at a massive club. It's something that the UK has had a better sense of than America for the last decade or two. But now, we're beginning to accept this sound across the ocean and everywhere else in the world. The sound of the future is here. Preconceptions are out there door, genres are being shattered and the digital sound IS indeed music. Disclosure just gets it. They get the concept of how we're a digital planet and our brains are wired to respond to the digital sound. They get how to infuse organic instrumentation into dance music and bring it together into an intricate and thoughtful creation. Settle is the proof of these ideas and it's an essay on exactly HOW Disclosure accomplished one of the best projects of the year
Disclosure resonates with me for a multitude of reasons. I grew up with the late-90's/early 00's underground hip-hop and drum & bass scenes in L.A shaping much of my musical brain. My crew loved the UK producers and we loved hip-hop from coast to coast. The transition back to indie rock/electro realm happened with artists like Thievery Corporation, Zero 7 and DJ Shadow bridging the gap. Musical fusions were king; genre-bending artists that brought forth the sound of the times and of the world. When SBTRKT did their thing, it was everything i wanted in music converging into one sound. I saw the bright future that laid ahead and i was stoked. Last year, Disclosure entered my world and i put a 4 track EP for the first time on the year end list. It was just so fucking exciting. As a music nerd, i was giddy and couldn't wait for more. There was mastery of electronica that pulled from 90's electro and there was something special here. Settle hit me like a freight train from the minute i put it on my headphones. I felt like i had predicted the future and my reward was even better than i expected. "White Noise" featuring AlunaGeorge is a beautiful moment in music. An intricate loop crashes into Aluna Francis' fluent lyricism filling the bars:
Just noise, white noise
Just noise, white noise
I'm hearing static, you're like an automatic
You just wanna keep me on repeat and hear me crying.It's so cool and what a single! One of the purest electro tracks on the record sees Disclosure bringing the vocalist to the forefront and it works on every level
Much like they did with soul singer Sam Smith on "Latch." It's remarkable to me how few producers have tried to make an electro-ballad. Smith's voice is gigantic and it's as if Disclosure fused dub-step into a Bassment Jaxx track
For all the moments on the album where Guy and Howard Lawrence (Disclosure) don't have a featured singer or even get behind the mic themselves, it's the tracks where they employ the vocal heavyweights of UK electro-soul that take the prize. Like the two examples above, or the stunning "You and Me" featuring Eliza Doolitle, who later appeared on Vic Mensa's Innanetape:
Electro-soul singer Jamie Woon on the atmospheric "January", who's been as close to a contemporary of the great James Blake that we've seen:
And this guy's a SOUL singer! Hence the term i championed in a piece i wrote earlier this year titled "From SBTRKT to Disclosure to Drake: The emergence of Electro-Soul." Go read that if you want more meat and bones on what it takes for a genre like this to come to prominence. Also, we're not done here :-) cause on perhaps the album's most electrifying moment, "Confess To Me," Disclosure pulls in the elegant Jessie Ware to absolutely blow you away if you weren't already:
And Ware had quite the year herself, much like Hannah Reid of London Grammar who lulls us into oblivion on the album's closing track "Help Me Lose My Mind." Reid sounds like a new-age Joni Mitchell who's come to prominence in the digital age
Reid, Ware and the aforementioned Francis have had quite the year themselves on their own releases. And here lies the point: In Settle, Disclosure has provided a venue for seemingly ALL of the up and coming stars in this phenomenal musical fusion to come together and be ONE on the definitive electro-soul release. The saying goes, "The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts." THIS is synergy. This is what the facial outlines you see on all of these images mean...We come together for one final product that we're all a part of. It's the essence of musical fusion and it's an attitude that the Lawrence brothers have taken to empower us all...artists and listeners alike. For a movement to occur, everyone needs to be on the same level and the music is spawned from one idea that fosters solidarity. It all ties back to "When a Fire starts to Burn", the album's opening track:
When a fire starts to burn
Right
And it starts to spreadIt's burning strong for sure....Put the romantic connotation of that song away for a moment and instead, think of the conflagration that Settle has incited. Think of the momentum that the fire is generating as it gets bigger...it's new, but still familiar, it's unexpected, it's soulful, it's bass, it's love, it's passion, it's comfort, it's unity, it's dancing, it's boundaries, it's breaking them, it's the future, it's music. It's here. Much love slash bong bong
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To listen to any of the albums on our countdown, check out our Spotify playlist here
Peep the archives of all of the albums reviewed up to this point
#1 drops on Monday December 16th!
