Glass Figure - Brightside of House EP

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  • Throwbacks don't get much more shameless than this debut EP from French producers Christoph Le Gall and Julien Mercier. As Glass Figure, they get the feel as well as the sound of the late '80s very right; there's an itch at the bottom of most of Brightside of House that's similar to what made early Chicago acid, Detroit techno and the first British answer records sing. The arrangements shift a lot, and it feels like they do because their makers want to show off everything they've got. The 303 is the star here, but it's not alone. The acid line that rides through "Brightside of House," for instance, dips in and out of the mix's center, alternating with swooping space age disco synths and hard-cranking snares to euphoric effect. "Mansion" brings its acid line to center stage more than halfway into the song; heavily filtered rave-swarm synths are the focus till then, not to mention a sludgy, pitched-down spoken male refrain: "In the house." "Whales Tears (707 Edit)" evokes an even earlier '80s—get rid of the 303 and the filters and you could mistake it for mid-decade TV soundtrack music—but the crisp, tweaked timbres throw it into sharp relief. "The Piano Question" is the most lighthearted track here, and maybe the best, for the way its many keyboard textures—smeared, perky, ruminative, strident—slide into one another.
  • Tracklist
      01. Brightside Of House 02. Mansion 03. Whales Tears (707 Edit) 04. The Piano Question
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