Pace Yourself 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Club culture can be curiously misled at times. While the focus is so often on breakdowns, in reality it's the hypnosis of looped drums and hi hats that often captures our imagination. And while belters frequently steal the limelight, in doing so we're at risk of forgetting the unifying, open-armed foundations that are found in everything from techno to hardcore to jungle and beyond. Brutal Flowers certainly makes a strong case for rethinking priorities. "A no-airs and graces piece of cool future-proof ambience" the label puts it. We'd agree. YS's stunning record seems to speak to our inner dreams of what rave has been and could still be, it hits nail-on-head in turning the emotions of surreal walks home post-club with friends into beautiful, understated yet grand synth overtures. It never forgets that heads down and ethereality are not opposites, but instead two halves of the same passion, and thoughtfulness is really the only secret ingredient in the dance music spectrum.

Review:  Pace Yourself has already won plenty of plaudits for a great debut EP from YS and equally superb ambient full length from Dream_E. Now it scores again with Horizons Sauvages, which was originally written for the exhibition of the same name by painter Marie-Laurence de Chauvingy de Blot. Both artists have a shared love of nature and the sound pallet here is just that. Organic, layered, endless, beautiful. Both pieces are meditative ones where new age music is reinvented with a less sentimental and cliched edge, and a more immersive and real world feel.