Disclosure: ENERGY | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- What could be more 2020 than dance music entwining with a video game and including messages of positivity? If you can’t get down at the club, then you can spend hours on the couch with Minecraft and pushing into your ears the sort of lyrics that normally would sit with some disposable pop fluff. (The Minecraft tie-in is “…the largest immersive musical activation within Minecraft” and “The metaverse features mountains, rolling streams, deep caves, and forests sprawled across seven climates, intended to reflect the musical diversity of the record.” Very 2020!).The Lawrence brothers, Guy and Howard who are Disclosure have pulled together an album that wanders through styles – but never far from the club. The club-kid who is suffering severe pandemic induced withdrawals should find some solace in these eleven tracks (nineteen if you grab the deluxe edition which adds their February 2020 EP Ecstasy). This is no run-of-the-mill Eurotrash night out, the Lawrence brothers use their experience with sampling, remixing and editing blending with a diverse cast of collaborators to provide an intriguing third, full-length release.

The collaborators are drawn from both sides of the Atlantic, with the emphasis strongly -and almost exclusively- on those of African descent. This gives ENERGY a flavour that changes from track to track, but with an overall drive not dissipating (even with the couple of slower tempo numbers thrown in the mix).The feeling is definitely warm and almost tropical and it does mean that you could turn your back on the grey, depressing lockdown life and slip into a faraway island paradise with cocktails, a sweet salty tang to the air, and a throbbing club to have you on a high for days.

Opening with Kelis strutting into the club on Watch Your Step, the action heats up with Channel Tres spraying around some sultry house beat infused Lavender (this ain’t your granny’s lavender either!) and goes right to boiling point on My High, which has Aminé and slowthai batting rhymes back and forth to each other in the middle of a juicy samba parade (if a track was ever made for one of the grand New York Haus Balls, then this is such a one).

Sitting in the middle of the album is Africa itself, with multiple Grammy nominee Malian Fatoumata Diawara making everything feel so good with her effortless vocals on Douha (Mali Mali) and after the wistful interlude Fractal, a move over to Cameroon with Blick Bassy deepening the smoothness of the groove over his near-whispered vocals and minimal instrumentation, save for various click tracks and some aural trickery on Ce n’est pas. These two tracks are worth the price of the album alone.

Yet, ENERGY hasn’t finished: the title track is a full-on Disclosure mash-up with voice samples from Afro-American motivational speaker Eric Thomas pushing the message of positivity and get-up-and-go-ism. From there, you know you need to come down and the final two tracks (after another interlude, the swish and overly lush '70's sounding Thinking Bout You) will bring you down without making you comatose. Kehlani and Syd give up some familiar chart friendly R&B style on Birthday and the grand ol’ man of '90's rap, Common drops some sweet truths on the last track, appropriately Reverie – “The same force that made you so valuable/I say don’t let the world take it out of you” and “people feeling naked with their clothes on/they want to go home/I tell them to go strong” and “a lot of sayers/we need more doers” and “when freedom calls/we gotta listen”. Amen to that.

- Blair Martin.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qW8270sfsxM" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>