- The great turn-of-the-'10s dance-music youthquake continues apace—this time via one of that surge's very own, naturally enough. Nicolas Jaar's newest signing to his Clown & Sunset imprint is Valentin Stip, a 19-year-old from Montreal whose debut typifies a few strategies without hewing too much to any of them.
For example, it's possible to hear in "Anytime Will Do" and "Esquise(s)," the EP's opening pair, sources from trip-hop to glitchy stuff like Akufen (on the former) to recent stuff from L.A., which is probably the closest stylistically, in that stoned-timbre-tweak way. But Stip's got more than just geographical distance from FlyLo & Pals. There's something structurally refined about those two tracks even at the moments you suspect are just him playing around.
Tracks 3 and 4 can't be referred to as "half" of Anytime Will Do, because they constitute two-thirds of its running time. "Gravels (1 et 2)" opens with what sounds like a koto, the traditional Japanese stringed instrument, plucking forth an insistent spaghetti western riff as aural smoke surrounds it. Over a leisurely 10:47, a travelogue seems to unfold, each shift of the percussion (ever-mutating congas) and vocal samples taking us seamlessly to a different setting. There's no bombast, just detail work. Also, a groove that grows positively humid as Stip brings in an exhaust-room hiss that eventually crowds the rest out at the finish. "Le Dormeur," a lovely downtempo track with keyboards that undulate like a pool's surface, sounds pretty conventional after "Gravels," but then, what wouldn't?
Tracklist A1 Anytime Will Do
A2 Esquise(e)
B1 Gravels (I and II)
B2 Le Dormeur