- Bill Converse is up next on the locally focused Texas Recordings Underground, offering two jacking hardware tracks filtered through a heavy layer of crunch. The A-side is a bone-dry DJ tool where the drum machine does most of the heavy lifting. The distortion here can feel a bit heavy-handed, but the swinging snares pair nicely with the bassline, a groove that's tough to resist. A mournful piano stab provides the melodic backbone, casting moody, film noir shadows across the track. With such a sparse arrangement, it's a reminder of how much magic can happen with just a few simple pieces of gear.
On the flip is "Ahead," where the drums take a back seat to big soaring melodies. Those jazzy vintage synths wouldn't sound out of place in a Floating Points set, though they're peaking out from behind a couple layers of extra grit. It shows a strong sense of pacing, with synths that open slowly and steadily, until the track's culmination around the seven-minute mark. Both tracks are definitely the same Converse we heard on this year's debut album, though he's stripped the sound down to its essentials for dance floor use.
TracklistA 7 Of 9
B Ahead