Occupying the fertile ground between organic band land and an all-electronic production project, Bob Moses draw on the two poles to vividly resonate across both. A duo with an individual name, Tom Howie and Jimmy Vallance’s musical endeavor plays with this kind of duality all over their debut album Days Gone By.
Invigorated by the now legendary scene that surrounded the illegal underground warehouse parties that were going down in New York championing a new wave of house and techno crews (including those connected to the Marcy Hotel and Resolute), Howie and Vallance were encouraged to dive in deep following a performance with Francis Harris’ Frank & Tony project in 2012, for which they’d been ghostwriting hooks. “We didn’t think much of it until we played Marcy with Frank & Tony in 2012,” Howie recalls. “Tom sang live to the tracks we’d written, and people went insane! We’d never expected that reaction, which made us think we were on to something,” Vallance says. “We woke up the next day thinking ‘We have to become our own act.’ We came up with the songs for our first EP, Hands to Hold, and Francis agreed to put it out.”
Alternating between brooding dancefloor burners and moments of reflective, downbeat repose, Days Gone By is a record that’s not in a rush to get to its destination, preferring to subtly, slowly seduce rather than sway and swagger into submission, weaving a rich spectrum of sensation over the course of its ten tracks.
The opening track Like It Or Not perfectly exemplifies the Bob Moses approach. A stark introduction of piano and voice departs into a propulsive, off-kilter house rhythm, before breaking right back down and riding out on a heady conclusion of vocal harmony, before the first single,Talk, spins a deceptively catchy vocal melody over jacking bass and foreboding ambience. Slinky, sinewy and imperceptibly catchy, Too Much is a grower in the shape of a guitar-led deep house Trojan horse. Tearing Me Up resurrects the oft-overlooked schaffel rhythm to deadly effect, a slow-burning, gyrating epic of tortured love that simmers without ever boiling over, while the title track unfolds in waves of repetition over almost seven hypnotic minutes, a melancholy slice of cathartic release and a worthy album centerpiece. Gentle rhodes chords and a loping heartbeat drum pattern marks Writing On The Wall as one of the record’s more vulnerable intermissions, and Here We Are closes out proceedings with a lush, melancholy acoustic guitar-led lament, a touching glance in the rearview. via: dominorecordco.com
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