Energy

About

It has been nearly five years since Disclosure released their second album <i>Caracal</i>. “There’s a threshold you have to hit as an artist before you can take any substantial time away and people will still give a shit when you get back,” Guy Lawrence tells Apple Music. “After surpassing every expectation we had as an electronic music duo from Surrey, we felt we were probably—hopefully—in that position.” <i>ENERGY</i> justifies the Lawrence brothers’ semi-sabbatical. It also justifies the all-caps title. The album—due to be released on August 28—is a carnival of bustling, stimulating sounds that takes in more genres than we’ve probably got room to list. “It’s the first time an album title relates to what’s on the record,” Howard says. “We just liked the word when naming <i>Settle</i>. <i>Caracal</i> is named after my favorite cat. This one is also generally just a bit more tactical than the others. We’ve now got a wider vocabulary. Our skills have progressed to the point where we can choose—like, Guy can choose to put together a French house tune, then I can say I want the chords to make me feel a certain way, and I have those chords available to me now. Before, I would just play all the chords I knew.” The first taste from one of 2020’s best dance records is its title track—and reunites the brothers with a familiar voice. “When we did ‘When a Fire Starts to Burn’ [from <i>Settle</i>], we wanted to find a rapper to work with, but didn’t know any rappers, or know how to get hold of any rappers,” says Howard. “It turns out there are no rappers in Surrey, so I Googled ‘Chicago man speaking’ and eventually—after a lot of weird shit—stumbled across [motivational speaker and author] Eric Thomas. We sampled Eric for that track, and expected everyone else to start sampling him, but they haven’t. Here, we wanted a vocal to match the track’s energy, and thought: ‘Fuck it, he’s brilliant, let’s do it again.’ “ENERGY” also allowed Guy to test out a new way of working. “The track really came from the first time I’ve messed around with library records,” he says. “We’ve got a really nice hookup with a couple of the guys at Bruton [London music library], and they have <i>everything</i>—from cheesy radio jingles, rainforest noises, and, luckily for us, this huge folder of African tribal drums. We’d been talking about doing a really percussive thing for a while, and as soon as this African, Brazilian tribal vibe came up, we were in.” Listen to “ENERGY” and pre-add the album now so it lands in your library as soon as it’s released.

via Apple Music