Howard must be about 21 years old by now, and his brother Guy about 18, so it would be a bit over the top to talk about ‘maturity’ with respect to the Lawrence brothers, aka Disclosure, keeping in mind that they have yet to finish growing (physically) and of course they are really just starting out in their musical career. But if this is the start, we’d better not even imagine the development, because we might get vertigo. Discovered by Moshi Moshi when they were still in high school, thanks to two luminous post-dubstep songs that ended up pressed on the 7” “Offline Dexterity” (2010), Disclosure began to move ahead, making haste slowly, as they say. Another 7” came, “Carnival / I Love… That You Know” (on Transparent), and then a third on Make Mine (“Tenderly / Flow”), all with the same typography and the same face on the cover. And now, after accepting the offer of the Greco-Roman label, the duo’s first 12” is finally here, in which their movement towards house, which one could only sense in the distance before, is now definitive.
If the previous titles were really very London, in the vein of Joy Orbison, “The Face EP” could perfectly well be a poker hand of anthems recorded in New York. It oozes deep house, reclaiming - or reimagining, since they didn’t even have facial hair back then - London speed garage; it smells of (teenage) passion and sex. As if they had gotten carried away with SBTRKT, these four cuts don’t let up at all. They contribute to setting the temperature of the summer, particularly on “Control” (with the vocal contribution of Ria Ritchie), a delicious house-pop treat that jumps up and down with happiness in your headphones. Before that refreshing ending, “Boiling” enters into the mysteries of classic deep house - think of the best Deep Dish, Presence / Charles Webster, Chris Brann, or even Blaze (the New Jersey classics would have killed for a voice like Sinead Harnett’s) - or those of euphoric 2step (“Lividup”: following the Todd Edwards style book with satisfactory results) and new English house (“What’s In Your Head”, worthy of Joy O). In conclusion, these blokes are scary. They’re sky-high and they don’t seem to have hit their limit yet.
