Dirty Little Secret

Description

Dealing in hi-def designer bassweight with a wide-angle lens, Cassius Select makes his Sneaker Social Club debut with five devastating exercises in micro-details and macro impact. It's been a few years since his last club-forward transmissions, but Lavurn Lee launches back into mind-frying rhythmic acrobatics and three-dimensional sound rendering without missing a beat. Over the past few years, Lee took time to explore songwriting via releases under his own name for DJ Plead's SUMAC label, widening the scope of his production work beyond the strident leaps he'd taken as Cassius Select from Accidental Jnr and Unknown To The Unknown to Bruk and Raw Basics. He pivots back to upfront beatdowns with some of the most tactile, dynamic work he's turned his studio chops to thus far. 'Ras Al Tool' surges forth from the speaker stack with a full-spectrum flourish of drums veering from organic inflections to glassy shimmers and bludgeoning digital thumps. With grimy leads and diced up samples darting in and out of the lattice of percussive precision, the overall effect is dizzying when you zero in on the detail, but instinctual when you let the beat move you without overthinking it. Gliding up the tempo slider, 'Quiet Fee' makes a subtle tip towards darkside intensity with eerie atmospherics and tightly wound sequencing, but still there's delicacy and flexibility in every fold of Lee's dazzling production. 'Dirty Little Secret!' widens the record out to kick the B side off on a slower, polymetric groove bouncing around 130 with Middle Eastern motifs and synth snarls parrying back and forth in a tete-a-tete of wildcard hooks. Just to make sure all tempos are covered, 'Icy Happen' jumps up to 165 with a deadly drum-focused construction heavy on the hand-played patterns before 'Rare Appearance' cools the EP down with the most overtly synth-led undulations of all the tracks on the record. The dexterity and advanced production flex that defines this latest wave of Cassius Select production is more than matched by the warmth and charm — these are tracks to feel rather than purely think about, no matter how technical the fine-grain sonics get. It's a devilishly detailed, but ultimately grin-inducing record to gift a whole spectrum of dancefloor situations.