Search The Line of Best Fit
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Blondes' third LP Warmth is exemplary club music

"Warmth"

Release date: 11 August 2017
7.5/10
Blondes Warmth
13 August 2017, 09:30 Written by Nathan Westley
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​With Warmth, the New York duo of Sam Haar and Zach Steinman have constructed an album that expertly captures the spirit of 3am raves in dingy Berlin clubs and late night warehouse parties within the Baltic states.

Proudly nocturnal in spirit, Warmth is a firm collection of ten heavily rhythmic workouts in which the duo also embrace slow builders such as opener "OP Actual", where understated metallic sounding melodies blur themselves within a bed of progressively minded, ever shifting grooves.

Their first album since 2013s Fisher sees the pair make a move towards sculpting tunes often centered around a strong percussive framework such as "Clipse", a delicately pieced together work where circular melodies flit between rhythmical gaps.

Things start to take a direct path towards hypnotic techno on "Quality of Life" where steadily pulsating 4/4 beats form a trance-inducing rhythmic bedrock for atmospheric synth lines to flow over.

Elsewhere, both "Trust" and "Tens" have a small darkwave undercurrent, but still maintain Blondes' characteristic interweaving synth lines with club-ready rhythms.

Blondes' third album sees them take several steps forward, delivering a piece that's often mesmeric and always distinctively theirs.

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