- With so many producers in the bass music realm making starry-eyed R&B from scraps of pop culture, it's about time they started making their own, isn't it? Montreal's Jacques Greene has provided some of the best examples of the stuff, and he seems to have gotten the memo with Concealer, the inaugural EP for his new label Vase. Lead track "Flatline" contains all the familiar ingredients: heavy house kicks, bright synths and buoyant basslines, but everything feels porous and breathy, leaving room for an impressive full vocal from fellow Montrealer Ango. It's a rare example of a dance music track living up to the kind of R&B imitated and adored by these producers in the first place.
The other three tracks are typical instrumentals, but they're bolstered with a confident sense of aesthetic. That's why "These Days" is reducible to a formula yet so impressive in execution: when those high-strung arpeggios chirp and that sped-up vocal start looping around maniacally, you can't help but be dazzled. "Clark" is a minimal bumper recalling his work on Night Slugs, but the nine-minute closer "Arrow" does it one better. A collaboration with Scottish newcomer Koreless, "Arrow" inhales and exhales gently, mixing the control of dynamics and empty space the Scot displayed on his debut single for Pictures Music deftly into Greene's array of drowsily pulsing rhythms.
Tracklist A1 Flatline feat. Ango
A2 These Days
B1 Clark
B2 Arrow feat. Koreless