- It's 2012, and that brand of UK-bred dance music without a name (the one no one's still particularly comfortable calling "bass music") is weighed down by unimaginative kids in their bedrooms aping the tropes of their favourite producers. 808 samples aside, the most overused of those tropes have to be the R&B vocals. There's nothing wrong with revaluation and rediscovery—a lot of these kids probably weren't into Aaliyah, Brandy and Ciara until they realised that their favourite artists were sampling them, and that's great. But you can tell when people are sampling stuff because they think it's the done thing, as opposed to because it means something to them, or because it's the right thing for the track.
Enter Canada's Sibian and Faun. Their debut single for Numbers is effectively an edit of Ashanti's 2007 single "Hey Baby," re-pitching and chopping the original's vocal over muffled garage drums and Joker-style crunchy purple bass. On paper, it sounds incredibly derivative—and to be fair, it is. But it's also done very, very well. What Sibian and Faun realise is that you can tick as many boxes as you want in terms of the elements that make up your tracks, but if you're not structuring them in a way that results in swing, tension, build and release, it means nothing. Sibian and Faun bring "I'm Sorry" to a boil with a genuine sense of craftsmanship, patience and song-writing guile that makes it damn hard to resist.