Like everyone knows, hip-hop got its start by DJs continuously looping the hottest breaks of funk/R&B songs at house parties. So a space that was originally about 10 seconds would be stretched to three or four minutes.
I feel like Brooklyn based producer Derek VanScoten’s project – called just D.V.S. – with their new album ‘Coming Up For Air: Vol. 2 dawn‘, has done something similar with electronica. Active in the same musical playground of other groove-happy maximal groups like Ratatat or Fuckbuttons, D.V.S. expands on smaller loops, and builds worlds around these otherwise simple statement. Derek’s twangy, often sliding guitar is the glue that keeps the pieces of this musical universe together.
Album opener ‘The Bending Bloom’ for instance, orbits around a single hook for its four minutes, expanding and contracting for an organic series of turns as unique as it is engrossing. The band even ventures into R&B material the way Flying Lotus updates free jazz for the mobile generation. From their first record’s focus on dusk, to their latest LP’s meditations on dawn, D.V.S. is an exciting group that knows how to make good use of their sources. – Mike Levine (@Goldnuggets)