Disclosure Settle
Listen free to Disclosure – Settle (Intro, When a Fire Starts to Burn and more). 13 tracks (59:09). Settle is the debut album by English electronic music duo.
Cunning if not particularly novel synthesists, Surrey's Guy and Howard Lawrence draw from several styles and sub-styles of dance music - house, garage, dubstep, bass - and add pop appeal on, their first album. The Lawrences began humbly with MySpace uploads of scruffy, sampling-enhanced dubstep tracks, but they quickly accelerated to making lustrous, impeccably assembled tracks with varied vocalists. Between October 2012 and April 2013, the duo released a trio of singles that fared no worse than number 11 on the U.K. Pop chart: the soaring shuffle-tech of 'Latch' (with a bursting, almost overdone lead from ), the undeniable crossover house track 'White Noise' (a perfectly timed partnership with upcoming duo ), and the rush-inducing so-called future garage of 'You & Me' (featuring, something of a sequel to their fine remix of 's 'Running'). Those hits appear here. Without them, the album would still be generous. Few tracks, however, will appease those who bemoaned the duo's departure from relying on sampled and treated vocals.
The sluggish 'Second Chance,' where a downcast line dissolves into mush, and the rattling 'Grab Her!' - its refrain pinched from - are no match for past sample-heavy delights like 'Carnival,' 'Flow,' or 'What's in Your Head.' The new vocal cuts are either near the level of the hits or are merely pleasant.
Howard Lawrence's lead turn on 'F for You' approaches the sweetness of 's. Teenaged sounds wise beyond her years on 'Voices,' one of the album's deeper house tracks ('I tried to dismiss what you taught me'). 's has the unenviable task of following, and but delivers one of the most heartrending leads on 'Help Me Lose My Mind.' Like the closing songs on the first three albums, the song initially comes across as an insignificant finale but gradually bubbles to the top as a discreet highlight. Considering all the shrewd alliances and its polished attack, seems like it was designed to be 2013's acceptable dance album.
That said, any purist who denies its pleasures is a crank.
In recent years, dance music's growing mainstream prominence has led to a number of excellent debuts: and 's self-titled efforts, and, to name a few. These records gained notice for recontextualizing the sounds of dance's various sub-genres- disco, dubstep, house, and more- into pop-leaning structures. The latest addition to this list is Settle, the brilliant debut album. The Surrey duo have not only made 2013's best dance record so far- they've also concocted one of the most assured, confident debuts from any genre in recent memory. That they've done so on a major-label record that's absolutely loaded with guest spots- these are typically red flags when approaching any dance full-length with crossover potential- is nothing short of a miracle. The brothers behind Disclosure, Howard and Guy Lawrence, seem impossibly young considering their talents: Guy is 21, while younger brother Howard just turned 18 a few weeks ago.
But they've actually been on the scene for three years, and their artistic growth over that period is impressive. Back in 2010, Disclosure first emerged on the blog circuit's nether regions with, a slice of competent, indistinct bass music that sounded like what you'd expect from a pair that have and as their gateways into club fare. With every succeeding release, however, Disclosure rapidly moved away from 'Street Light Chronicle's weatherbeaten greys towards a smoother, brighter sound.
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Last year's fantastic greatly increased both artists' profiles; earlier this year, Disclosure's collaboration with singer Aluna Francis, rocketed to #2 on the UK Singles chart two weeks after its release. Clearly, they've come a long way in a short time. A number of tracks from Disclosure's earlier releases would be considered highlights on any debut album. Two of them, and, from the enjoyable 2011 EP The Face, are relegated to bonus track status on Settle's deluxe edition. That such strong material didn't make the album proper speaks to its high quality. Steelmate scooter alarm manual.
Over its hour-long runtime, Settle features an masterful sense of pacing, from the jacking propulsion of to the album's sweeping closer, 'Help Me Lose My Mind'. Dance music's long had a fickle relationship with the album format, but Settle's impeccable sequencing leads to an album that begs to be heard in its entirety. Settle's playful, high-energy attitude is sometimes reminiscent of Remedy, 's star-making 1999 debut.
The duos share divisive tendencies: Jaxx's brash and hyper-active production style rubs some the wrong way, and Disclosure have been called out for their clear debt to established UK dance styles. Specifically, Disclosure have been charged with riding the resurgence of the syncopated, R&B-infused gait of late 1990s/early 2000s 2-step and UK Garage touchstones like MJ Cole's ' and Hardrive's '; last month, they released of 2-step kings - and this after after UKG veteran late last year, making the inspiration explicit.
Disclosure Settle Album Download Zip
The skepticism is understandable, to a point. UK dance culture has long prided itself on pushing things forward, and Disclosure's arrival on the scene- not to mention bass music's current retro-fixated house excursions- marks the first time in many years that the freshest dance sounds from across the pond sound a little second-hand. Ultimately though, complaining about young artists reviving sounds that they weren't around to experience the first time around is futile. We're a few years into an era where talented musicians are discovering influences new and old not through direct interaction with scenes but through their computers. And when the execution is this accomplished, it's hard to get too hung up on the source material. Some of Settle's giddiest highlights are clear UKG callbacks- 'Voices' and, especially- but Disclosure refuse to stick to any single genre.
They effortlessly spin through romantic house ('Defeated No More', ), pitch-screwed bass music ('Second Chance'), and raunchy grime-inflected motifs ('Confess to Me'); nothing is off limits, and Settle is all the better for it. For all its dance trappings, Settle is a pop record first and foremost, one that feels remarkably inclusive. The handful of male-led vocal cuts range from solid ( vocalist Ed MacFarlane's sultry take on 'Defeated No More', 's emotive pleading on 'January') to showstopping (the indelible, effusive, Howard Lawrence's surprisingly effective turn on 'F for You'), but Settle's array of female voices are the record's nucleus. While a few notable names are used in surprising fashion- folk-pop singer Lianne La Havas' effusive, bleated samples on 'Stimulation', Jessie Ware's muted moves on 'Confess to Me'- the biggest star turns come from up-and-comers like Sasha Keable and London Grammar's Hannah Reid, who shares a co-writing credit on 'Help Me Lose My Mind'. While listening to Settle, came to mind; in 2013, it could be argued that such aggressively chauvinistic attitudes pervade many areas of big-tent dance culture, and it's hard not to hear Settle's wide-reaching accessibility as a potential antidote to the trend. Skirting dance's more bass-heavy strands, Disclosure take a spare approach to sampling throughout Settle.
They lift a few stray sounds from and and, most curiously, motivational speaker and self-proclaimed 'hip-hop preacher', whose impassioned delivery is featured on the album's intro as well as 'When a Fire Starts to Burn'. The video for the latter brings the sample to life visually and it turns out to be a strange reflection of its source material. As was, dance music's history contains frequent intersections, ideological and otherwise, with religion. Much like when dance-pop alchemists released their own devotional to the dancefloor in the form of last year's stellar, Settle's appeal ultimately owes something to its spiritual tinge. Disclosure's unabashed pop sensibilities speak to the notion that music, as with a system of beliefs, can bring a diverse array of people- the dance nerds and the poptimists, the club denizens and the festival obsessives, the perpetually stylish and the utterly clueless- together as one.
Settle is an album-length articulation of this idea, and it's hard not to believe in that.