It can be hard to strike a balance between consistency and creativity on an electronic EP. Mostly, dance music releases are not designed to be digested in a full sitting, with drawn-out, repetitive tracks that tend to be crafted for deejays more than focused home listeners. Sometimes you get four-trackers that feel like indistinguishable variations on a single genre (and I daresay a lot of post-COVID Australian prog EPs fit very comfortably within this category). Sometimes you get albums that cram in as many stylistic changes as Ableton will allow - a scattershot method to enter a revered USB.

Unsolicited Joints, the eponymous collaboration between Eora brothers Charles (aka Cousin) and Ben Fester, does not have the above problem. The EP is as cohesive as it is dynamic, filtering distinct genres and rhythms through a familiar watercolour lens. There is no mistaking the care taken to weave these songs together, nor the individuals behind the hardware. The EP has the fingerprints of Cousin all over it: few other producers are able to achieve that singularly dubby, kinetic sound.

For an electronic release, Unsolicited Joints is refreshingly versatile. At once, it is a textured, absorbing headphone listen, a melodic accompaniment to an outdoor walk, and a heady, transfixing club tool. It helps that the Festers opt for prettiness over withering intensity, supplementing the measured tempos of dub techno, deep house and dubstep with colourful, muted embellishments. The EP often recalls the sound of club music played through crisp speakers but heard at the back of the room, where the bass hits with a roundness and softness and where gossamer synth tones float just out of arms reach.

These are pristinely balanced songs. Sharp acid lines are tempered by lush pads filling up the space in the mix, and the pulsating, insistent percussion is brightened by gorgeous harmonics. For every passage of lean dancefloor introspection - as on the subaquatic ‘Joint 3’ - you have a moment of emotional grandeur, like the gilded synth hit that pierces through ‘Joint 4’ at the 2:25 mark. The menacing, serrated bass of ‘Joint 5’ is all the more enjoyable as a counterpoint to the bouncy 90s house of ‘Joint 2’. Unsolicited Joints manages to be both spritely and carefully enveloping; its entire 33 minute runtime is remarkably compelling.

85

Sam Gollings

15 September 2023