BOILER ROOM UPFRONT MIX 014 : FRIENDZONE

52 MINUTES OF NEW MUSIC 

AVAILABLE NOW

“James Laurence and Dylan Reznick are not easy to pin down. If there’s one thing that defines them as producers and people, it’s emotional freedom. They don’t so much wear hearts on sleeves as having a million beating emojis all over their bodies,Blingee style. Their tracks contain great shimmering swells of the stuff, dripping with synthetic saturation; the prettiness verges on the unbearable at times.
The Bay Area duo’s beats have shaded chart-topping recordsan extra hue of weird, but also been rejected from other era-defining classics for being too esoteric. They fuck with noise a lot (which makes sense given Dylan’s backdrop in the art-damaged DIY scene): sometimes you get a fierce squall layered atop; others, a fluttering serenity.
The blinding brightness, textural interplay and out ‘n’ out beauty wouldn’t have found much favour even a handful of years before their breakthrough in 2011-2. Thankfully, the rap scene was ready to receive. It’s something we alluded to hereand here: whatever concrete signifiers existed beforehand have been demolished, liberating the souls inside and allowing openness, and thus creativity, to flourish anew. ‘Rap’ doesn’t even feel like an accurate term for the most part: after all, this is an act tugging at the same samples used by To Rococo Rotand Young Marco’s Gaussian Curve.
Standout full-lengths COLLECTION 1 & DX weren’t exactly conventional; frankly, nothing in their catalogue has been. Thankfully, their all-originals Upfront doesn’t hold back. After a period of somewhat enforced hibernation (see left), it felt high time to get the jumper cables out. Here are sixteen of the best.
– Gabriel Szatan”