Gerry Read - All By Myself / What A Mess

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  • Like many of his peers, the 19-year-old producer Gerry Read, from Suffolk, has a foot in two camps. A year ago, he was making dubstep, a style that also loosely describes his single "Roomland," from just last month. But this year's trilogy of EPs for Fourth Wave is deep house, full stop. Read gets tagged as "bass music," but his Fourth Wave records show how arbitrary that term can be when it can so easily encompass Theo Parrish/Moodymann homages. That's not a complaint about Read's work, by the way. Aping Detroit's deepest is a widespread phenomenon, and far lesser talents than Read have tried to follow in their footsteps. One of the things that he brings to the table is murk. That's true across all three Fourth Wave EPs, which wrap their drum machines in warbly vocals and dirty filters, until everything but the hi-hats are hazy. "All By Myself" takes the soot-stirring to a new extreme, with a growling acoustic bass and muted piano chords beneath a hiss of cymbals; the lead vocal, though, gives the song a soulful sense of focus. "What a Mess" tumbles like a muddy agate, with a Ronny Jordan-like guitar lick suffused in indistinct buzz, and an unsettling vocal loop that sounds like a pitched-down Antony. Here, the drums carry everything forward, with a particularly visceral snare/clap sound cutting like a beacon through the fog.
  • Tracklist
      A All By Myself B What A Mess
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