- Dark Sky's music has long taken cues from the dominant sound of the time, from the Zomby-indebted dubstep of their 2010 debut, Something To Lose, through to the muscular UK house of 2011's Radius, or the following year's Shutter Speed, which echoed Objekt's obtuse techno. In each case the group's take on their chosen form is skillfully executed and rarely descends into pastiche, even if it is perhaps a little sanitised.
The trio now find themselves on Mister Saturday Night, an imprint at the forefront of New York's house scene. These four deep house tracks, with their lustrous chord work and tasteful reverb, sit neatly among the label's signings to date. The sampled chords of "In Brackets" are daubed over a gentle house thump, before garage-via-post-dubstep syncopations and a sinuous bassline take over in the latter half.
"5am," with its muted, burbling synths, is similarly subdued. In both cases a Floating Points comparison wouldn't be remiss—these tracks are elegant in the extreme, and led by their melodic content. "Voices" is slightly more euphoric, but its stuttering piano-and-voice samples can't quite settle into a hook, although they try out a few. Finally, "Rare Bloom" is the most striking of the lot, its blissful, brassy synth motif rising and falling artfully, before taking on a sterner momentum in the second half. These tracks are all entirely fit for purpose, though—as with much of Dark Sky's output—they don't break new ground so much as comb meticulously over the earth upturned by others.
Tracklist A1 In Brackets
A2 5am
B1 Voices
B2 Rare Bloom