After exhorting us to fall in love last Summer via their debut EP and with nothing but a number of well-received podcasts later, it is high time that the Brooklyn duo proved that ‘Love Pressure’ was no fluke and – especially – ‘The Warning’, a profoundly elegiac highlight from that release and, for this listener, from the last year in bass music.
Eponymous opener ‘Fleur’ could comfortably be that track’s second movement, with half-time rimshot beats harnessed to vibraphone, nylon guitar and bonafide female harmonies to push the nostalgia even more strongly towards warm & atmospheric 90s R&B. ‘Your Love’ and ‘No Think’ are more frenetic in tone and less expansive in scope; but while both are fundamentally sub bass-anchored, 135 BPM percussive workouts, they manage to retain much of their affective clout thanks to cyclic chord patterns neatly harmonising with trademark choral punctuation.
As with this EP’s precursor, however, the standout track is found in closing. ‘Inside’ is a gorgeous ambient finale, a lysergic rush of sepia-drenched pads, corruscating, BOC-esque key arpeggios and long-buried vocal samples; as it fulminates towards its apotheosis and that of the EP itself, one is left in no doubt that Sepalcure have cemented their place as bass music’s new emotional masters.