- Sully lives in Norwich, but he's always seemed at home in London's concrete jungle. His music tirelessly explores its crooked streets, encountering the city's musical styles from fresh angles. His new album, however, hints at urban fatigue. There's the title, Escape, and the sleeve photo, which shows a pink balloon floating free of greying urban architecture. The opening track, "Thema I," is a grand beatless number full of swelling chords and sweeping melody. It sounds less like a UK dance floor mutation than a pitch to score Blade Runner 2049.
On that track and "Thema II," Sully handles this new filmic formula with his usual deft touch. But it turns out these are little more than sojourns from the city, and before long he's pounding familiar streets. Sometimes a bit too familiar: "Bullseye" reprises the melancholic garage sound of his late '00s beginnings, and a vocal from Jamakabi can't keep it from sounding dated. Other tracks, however, show how it pays to repeat a formula. Sully's been riffing on jungle since at least 2014, and "Vanta" and "X Plus Y" suggest that he's still got tricks up his sleeve. Each contorts lithe breakbeats into ever wilder shapes. The effect is spooky on the former, where divas and ragga MCs moan like digital ghouls, and lighter on the latter, with its dip-diving snare rolls and bright melodies.
Grime comes in the crosshairs, too. "Casablanca," with Jendor, shakes up a fairly standard 140 BPM rhythm—spiky clap patterns, stern synth-string melody—with a hailstorm of clever micro-detail. The instrumental "Assembly 1" is refreshing as well, with its cascade of sci-fi blips and skronks, clever beat fake-outs and smokebombs of reverb. Going by these tracks, "escape" is exactly what this album isn't. It's as immersed in UK dance culture, and beholden to Sully's usual habits and preoccupations, as anything he's released in the past decade. But the producer still finds ways to surprise you. "Assembly 2" calls back to grime, but it snakes along circa 90 BPM, its minor-key melody and "Pulse X"-style kick drum framed by a skeletal dembow rhythm. Sully's music might not be leaving the city any time soon, but a holiday in the Caribbean could do him a world of good.
Tracklist01. Thema I
02. Casablanca
03. Assembly 1
04. Bullseye
05. Assembly 2
06. Thema II
07. Vanta
08. X Plus Y