Disclosure: Settle

By Alif Omar Mahfix • 10 Jul 2013 in Review

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THE BETTER DUO
Frankly, dance’s ubiquity in the mainstream today is annoying – it reached saturation point long ago. Thankfully, as it is with other genres, reaching saturation point equates to a filtering of acts. As much as the Guettas of the world are still making tonnes of money, the mainstream would eventually find an act that can be as mass as they are music nerd-approved. Not that dance doesn’t already have this, mind you, but we are still looking at oft-cited seniors as dance saviours – Daft Punk, who are going backwards to ‘give life to music’ (music was dead? JUICE hadn’t realised).

It is a blessing then that youngins Disclosure pulled a Basement Jaxx, found a good compromise between pop and quality dance, and joined the charts. We need a younger face in the scene, unperturbed by the supposition that modern music is facing a dearth in quality. In a flit of irony, Settle is like Random Access Memories in that both regressed to older dance in order to extricate itself from stunted growth. However, being kid adults (they are 21 and 18 respectively), Disclosure didn’t need to look too far back and only mined as far as the heights of UK garage in the early ‘00s.

Settle is heavy on vocals, giving credence to the claim that the brothers have eyes only on the charts, but these tracks are handled with adroit carefulness that reminded us of Magnetic Man (AlunaGeorge, Sinead Harnett, Jessie Ware are all credible pop musicians, just like Katy B). And when Disclosure decided to do an instrumental, it’s absolutely transcendental – just listen to the spoken word-sampling ‘When a Fire Starts to Burn’.

LISTEN TO: ‘When a Fire Starts to Burn’
IF YOU LIKE THIS YOU’LL DIG: Rudimental
RATING: 4