News

Simian Mobile Disco To Release New EP

• 14th Aug 2012

Fresh off the release of their critically acclaimed album “Unpatterns” comes a brand new 4 track EP from the tirelessly innovative Simian Mobile Disco, aka James Ford and Jas Shaw.

The EP collects four tracks from the “Unpatterns” recording sessions which, for one reason or other, didn’t quite fit in on the album. Once again, we hear the band plowing the furrow of manipulating subtle modifications to machine generated patterns, allowing parts to drift and shift, and new forms to be teased out.

The title track opens with two minutes of ambient textures and warm drones, before snapping on a kick-and-woodblock pattern that anchors the track as the various melodies weave in and out of time with each other over the sprawling psychedelic background.

“Unfixed” and “Breaking Time” sees the duo back in club mode, with “Unfixed” an exercise in contrasts. Its glistening, rippling melodies belie a booming bass and thunderous kick – a superstructure that keeps the flight-of-fancy trills anchored as they build to shuddering climaxes. “Breaking Time”, meanwhile, is classic SMD acid-tinged club gear, its dark, gnarly melodies taking cues from their Delicacies releases.

EP closer “Everyday” is another take on the minimal vocal-as-instrument style used to such great effect on Unpatterns, gently teasing out the effected refrain, layered over lush pads and tom patterns.

Taken together, the A Form of Change EP is another sterling example of Simian Mobile Disco’s restless creativity, and their yen for refining and redefining the parameters of their own musical landscape with almost laserlike precision, following Brian Eno’s maxim that “repetition is a form of change”. Given the stunning scope of the EP, that principle is hard to deny.

Simian Mobile Disco will also be heading out in the autumn, taking their renowned live analogue show on the road for shows across the UK and Europe