- Sepalcure was packed with great tunes when it dropped in 2011, and its subsequent EPs were solid echoes of that colorful, delicate dance music. Then Travis Stewart and Praveen Sharma (AKA Machinedrum and Braille) took time to focus on their solo projects—Stewart with his year-long Vapor City campaign and Sharma with his debut album. So the stars have aligned on late 2015 as the staging ground for their return, with the lead single from the duo's second full-length hitting Hotflush about six months before the album. But the Fight For Us EP feels less like the start of Sepalcure's next phase than it does the lingering reverberations of their past.
"Music 4 All" is the most familiar thing here. With its central sample play, warm chord stabs, thick atmosphere and limber beat, the track sounds taken from the playbooks of both Sepalcure and the UK bass scene it emerged from in 2010. For that it'll have a hard time wowing the long-initiated, but could easily charm a dance floor in need of a classy, booming thump.
The title track brings a new wrinkle to Stewart and Sharma's repertoire, however, and that's largely because of Toronto singer Rochelle Jordan. Sure, "Fight For Us" is more straight-up R&B than anything else in the Sepalcure catalog, but its emotive chords and acoustic guitar flourishes are business as usual. Hearing the duo work with a live vocalist and verge on radio-friendly songwriting is a nice change of pace, so it's disappointing when "Fight For Us" leans heavier on lush sound design than memorable hooks or structure. Jordan competes against all the intricate, unfurling details, and it feels like Sepalcure burying their most interesting asset under everything we've heard before.
Tracklist01. Fight For Us feat. Rochelle Jordan
02. Music 4 All