Disclosure’s Guy and Howard Lawrence came up as emissaries between worlds—like club and pop, or old-school 2-step and future garage—which made them the perfect choice to serve as UK dance music’s ambassadors at Boiler Room’s first-ever event in Shanghai, China. Kicking off with an extended snippet of the Eric Thomas motivational speech they sampled for “When a Fire Starts to Burn,” the brothers take a deep dive into their punchy brand of house music. A chunky cut from Four Tet’s Percussions alias injects breakbeats and sampled soul; they milk Phil Weeks’ percussive “It’s the Inside That Counts” for maximum filter delirium; and they pay tribute to border-hopping acts with “Let Go of This Acid,” a jacking house production from erstwhile dubstep producer Artwork. The drums throughout are crisp and muscular, but it’s their singular use of color—via splashes of disco, house synths, and sampled vocals—that makes the whole thing so revelatory.
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