Pále – Catacombs EP

Pále is Manchester’s Leo Marcus and his new Catacombs EP is out on 22 October. This is a delicate dance floor affair.

Catacombs are human-made subterranean passageways for religious practice, usually burials. And there’s something dark, ethereal and echoey about the track Catacombs. The bass is underground deep but the beats are light and the ambience soaringly ‘lost’. Oak Music sounds like an oak. Perhaps not. I’ve no idea what an oak sounds like. This has small beginnings with long-drawn string giving way to more insistent beats but never quite losing the sense of yearning. The EP ends with Orchidea is a wonderful piece of comedown music, if that isn’t selling this beautiful track short. There’s a piano line to die for, with clicks and vocal samples that rattle round your mind. The word Orchid, of course, comes from the Greek for testicle due to the shape of the root. The track is therefore the bollocks literally.

Catacombs

Orchidea

Blurb: Manchester based Pále, aka Leo Marcus, has made some serious waves this year, delicately blending spacious melodies with pounding low end to produce consistently forward thinking house music. After dropping his superb Why’d You Even Say? EP on Fat! Records back in January, along with the brilliant Silverstair on Four40 and his ridiculously huge remix of Mak & Pasteman’s Jungle Juice Pále has not only showcased his impressive variety but also genuinely established himself as one of the most exciting youngsters around at the moment. This 3 track EP kicks off with Catacombs, which balances punchy bass stabs with ethereal vocal samples and skittering percussion to create undoubtedly one of Pále’s best tracks to date, something that manages to be fully dance-floor orientated whilst retaining a sense of blissful serenity. Oak Music opens with typically atmospheric pads and beautiful strings before falling into a void, the bassline pulsating ominously, accompanied by sparse clicks and an emotive melody before another breakdown of near-euphoric tranquility. The release is perfectly rounded off with Orchidea, a luscious sepia-tinted slow jam, or as Pále himself would describe it – “slow beats for tired feet.”

CTFAT125 – Catacombs EP

Artist: Pále 
Label: Fat! Records 
Release Date: 22/10/2012 
Format: Digital

~ by acidted on October 8, 2012.