James Sison – Napier Lake EP

Despite Bade Records short life span the label has already secured itself as one of the top dogs for putting out the deeper shades of house and techno. Its fourth release comes from co-owner James Sison, a Londoner who takes a melodic and hypnotic approach into his productions of house music, and thus, stays true to his imprint.

The opener starts out relatively bright, but grows darker as the track proceeds meaning this one makes for a very nice mood changer on the dancefloor. There’s a gorgeous ethereal vocal on ‘Clover’, which stays nicely soulful without turning cheesy. It adds an enthralling effect when combined with the glowing, varying arp that changes octave throughout.

Filtered hats tend to give a feeling of rough raw aggression, though that’s not necessarily the case with ‘Napier Lake’. Sison changes the formula and unleashes pretty ghostly pads to evolve around percussion and flickering electronic synthesis. It’s actually quite minimal in its approach, remaining coherent with the first track by sporting that hypnotic movement of spine tingling arpeggiators. Reverberated big room pads are reigned in, taking away some power but leaving the soul, making this one feel like a less, overly large Ten Walls track.

The Speaking Minds remix meanwhile, takes away the smoothness of the original, taking the approach of a slightly more ridged techno record. The hats are suitably spine tingling, but it’s the keys that take lead as they pop over dripping, water-like electronic injections that fall away after delicately tapping their way in.

Although I can’t help but feel like each of these records would make perfect transition tools for genre switching, that doesn’t mean they don’t stand up on their own. The self-entitled (Napier Lake) especially, is a reward for the dance-floor. It provides a soothing break in play and takes the job of growing serious tension in a subtle, and beautiful way.

Released on Monday, take a listen to the release below!

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