Bicep:
Just (Aus)
“Just”
has a bit of 90s nostalgia about it with its broken beat (recalling
Black Dog and Plaid) and its soaring arrangement of pads and bleeping
leads. To me it embodies the same kind of magic found in those early
Warp Artificial Intelligence records, blending early 90s bleep with
something more lush and emotive, sort of the archetype of early IDM.
Its repetitive melodic hook is at the melancholy core of the track,
and its lack of a four-to-the-floor kick drum is refreshing. I wasn’t
totally convinced it would work in a DJ set, but I heard it played
out in Portland recently and it was a breath of fresh air amidst so
many house music soundalikes. “Celeste,” by comparison, is
practically sublime. It’s more traditionally house in arrangement
with looping vocal samples and filtered piano chords that reveal
themselves over time. It shares the opening cut’s wistfulness, but
its syncopated hand drums and steady, low kick give it a deeper
flavor.
The nods to 90s dance music run deeper on both versions of
“Back 2 U,” appearing as an original with a vocal sample as its
hook and an instrumental version that is honestly not very different
(only one vocal sample is missing, otherwise it’s pretty much the
same). They blend in a bit of a trance vibe in their melancholic
repetition, reminding me of blissed out after hours remixes from the
mid 90s, big reverberated arrangements and snare rushes and all.
While the instrumental version of “Back 2 U” seems like a bit of
a formality, I suppose it has its use for DJs looking to work without
the main soaring vocal sample. All three of the original cuts are
worth a listen, though, and each one offers up a slightly different
flavor of nostalgia and movement.
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