Since Montreal native Jacques Greene, 24, emerged with his first solo releases in late 2010 - The Look 12" EP (LuckyMe) and Another Girl 12" Single (LuckyMe, a Pitchfork Top 100 Track of the Year) - he has drawn upon real R&B, House & Techno to create a modern palette which served to influence contemporaries from Jamie XX to Disclosure and Julio Bashmore. But with the UK offering such excellent cross-over Dance successes in 2013 it can be easy to forget where our musical landscape was just tree years ago when Jacques Greene’s faceless demos began to creep online. Just prior to the young Canadian’s debut, US R&B had recently combined with the worst of European 4/4 Electro House & Trance to form a bottle-service delivery of compressed Pop-Dance to our charts. Greene represented something wholly contrary. A young outsider who, in isolation, was experimenting with fusing the fraught sentiment and sexuality of modern R&B and movement and soul of classic House and Techno. Not in any way retro, there are very few modern producers who can claim to have mastered their form – using original analogue equipment and the very essence of their influences to create such expressive and rich dance music. LM015 - On Your Side EP is the product of many years of experimentation at the boundary between R&B and Dance music. It is only now after a slew of taste maker releases in dance music that we find Jacques Greene as an accomplished writer and arranger aspiring to work in song format. With our lead single featuring Tom Krell aka How To Dress Well, this is not the exaltation of a lone R&B hook that we are used to but rather a fully developed original song that finds it’s place perfectly balanced between both artists. It’s unashamed hook and addictive bridge in a beautifully delicate falsetto which rides on top of assured shuffle of percussion. No one here can claim this is a Summer record – the air of cool it evokes is for 4am at any time of year. This is the crystallization of something JG has been working towards. All his tastes reconciled into one stunning moment of classic house / modern house, classic pop / modern R&B. The remaining tracks too, show JG’s development. B1 Faithful returns to JG’s vocal sample hallmark but this time without the processing. This is not a percussive use of vocal but rather an upfront gospel-inflected hook in the vein of classic US house courtesy of good friend Olivier Day Soul. Then to close we return to the deep instrumentals we have expect from JG. B2 Quicksand first appeared as an ‘untitled’ highlight in Greene’s takeover at BBC 6Music in October. Now with 160,000+ plays on Soundcloud Quicksand finds its place as the euphoric finale of this satisfying three track EP which further establishes Jacques Greene, still young and evolving; a clear leader in his lane. Now touring with fully analogue live performance and vocalists – with additional visual gallery show and separate DJ sets, Jacques Greene is stepping out like never before.
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