- James Clements' recent work as ASC has had a knack for extracting emotion from the unemotional, finding resonance in the autonomous click-clack of machines. It was arguably the dominant theme of his excellent NonPlus+ LP Nothing Is Certain, and continues on the first release for his self-run label Auxiliary. On "The Touch," the rectangular pads jerk back and forth as if tracked on rails, but there's something appealingly smooth and sexy about their split-second motion, the way they move in disjointed lock-step with the straight-laced percussion.
What does separate "The Touch" from its NonPlus+ brethren is its relative transparency. Clements doesn't have to do much extraction here because the song's sensual core is on full display, veins bulging and pulsing gently with lifeblood. It's not as if ASC is the first to sample straightforward R&B vocals (it's getting to be a bandwagon thing in bass music at this point, in fact), but the way they're allowed to glide into earshot and nimbly dodge those locked-in pads reveals a pop sensibility on Clements' part. Tracks like "The Touch" are arguably even more focused on tickling the ear than being merely functional.
Clements' wife Vaccine provides a dubstep-tempo remix on the flipside, adding the sultry vocals of rising star Riya. She augments the swirling cloud of harmonized breath with the forceful thrust of swung, snappy drums, lending it a new urgency even in its slower crawl. Like her husband, she makes little concession to the constraints of the genre she's working in; Vaccine's idea of dubstep is otherworldly and more informed by the nostalgic evocations of peers like Instra:mental. With this release, James Clements has made the ideal justification for adding yet another label to the overwhelming multitude. He has his own completely unique brand of drum & bass music, so why not, well, brand it?
TracklistA The Touch
B The Touch (Vaccine feat. Riya Remix)