- 1080p has issued a lot of great dance music, but its cassette-and-digital-only policy tends to emphasize home listening more than club play. Now, like Opal Tapes before it, the Vancouver label is embarking on its long-promised vinyl series. It starts with a selection of cuts pruned from one of 1080p's finest releases of 2015, Project Pablo's I Want To Believe. That tape proved to be pivotal for Montreal-based Patrick Holland, whose previous work wrestled with deep house history without putting his own spin on it. I Want To Believe absorbed the sounds of Vancouver, Holland's previous home base, and came up with something more loungey and personable.
"Follow It Up (Dandana Mix)" is the 12-inch's sole new track, and it's an update of one of the tape's standouts. This one lays out the fundamentals of Holland's newer sound: dextrous disco bass, chunky percussion and woozy melodies (in this case strings and guitar) that sound sampled off a dusty record. The jacking "Always" is just as DIY and a little spikier, with a rude bassline and chirpy synth runs, while "Why, Though?" gets a bit more jaunty.
"Movin' Out," which still sounds fresh and engaging half a year after its original release, is the most memorable track. Where the other three are jumpy and precocious, this one is purely cool. It's built on top of a walking bassline, carefully daubed with soft-focus chords and drizzled with wistful saxophone. There's no mistaking it—the sound is straight out of Jack J's playbook, specifically from the Mood Hut 12-inch that lit last summer on fire. It's equally hard to deny Holland's adroitness with the form, or his own extra touches, like the nostalgic synths that quietly coat the background. It hints that he's getting better at figuring out what makes his music, well, his.
TracklistA1 Follow It Up (Dandana Mix)
A2 Movin' Out
B1 Always
B2 Why, Though?