Sepalcure’s Love Pressure EP serves as yet another reminder of how easy it’s been to love Scuba’s label over the last couple of years; as much as he’s managed to unearth some wonderfully obscure talents, it proves even more impressive that each seems to slot perfectly into the label’s wider aesthetic. I don’t think I’ve heard a Hotflush release recently that sounded like anything other than a Hotflush release; the fractured techno of Sigha’s recent Shake EP is as attuned to the whole as Mount Kimbie’s Crooks & Lovers album or Ramadanman and dBridge’s recent Autonomic-styled forays. Sepalcure are another weapon in their already sizeable arsenal.
The Brooklyn-borne Love Pressure EP is apparently the result of a ‘cathartic two week collaboration’ between Praveen and Machinedrum, and its swift gestation shows. All four tracks could almost have been recorded live, were it not for the delicate sample work throughout. Sepalcure’s music is coated in a thin haze of vinyl crackle, lending it a spontaneous, bedroom session feel far removed from the glossy sheen favoured by more dancefloor oriented producers. Which isn’t to say these tracks aren’t danceable – second track and EP highlight ‘Down’ is fiendishly so – but more that they reveal far more with careful inspection.
There’s a nervy, wide-awake feel to everything on here that seems to work in total opposition to the music’s ethereal fuzz. It’s akin to a sensation of chemically induced wakefulness at a time when you really ought to be asleep; elements emerge in turn before sinking again into the background as the attention moves elsewhere. Those focal points tend to be the vocal snippets that punctuate each track, which brim with crisp vitality and set up a delicious tension against their lo-fi backing. That conflict ramps up the energy quotient considerably, especially on the EP’s second side with the slower ‘Every Day Of My Life’ and the shimmering synthplay of ‘The Warning’. Once it ends, it’s almost impossible not to flip the record and start again.
Words: Rory Gibb
Out: Now
Link:
www.myspace.com/sepalcure
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