Breach & Dark Sky - The Click / The Fallout

Label: Naked Naked

Ben Westbeech follows up an accomplished collab with Midland on his Naked Naked label by joining forces with UK trio Dark Sky, known for their high grade low-end and impeccable production skills. It sounds like a match made in heaven, and the two tunes on offer sound fantastic, and would definitely kill on the dancefloor, but the release feels surprisingly safe and unremarkable compared to the highlights of either outfits’ work. The Click is the more brutal of the two, a brilliant bassline tunnelling under spare percussion, filtered synth work and a typically Dark Sky glut of atmospheric details. All the same, from the snipped vocal sample to the straight-laced beat patterns, the whole affair just sounds like a high quality remake of a relatively average house track.

The Click / The Fallout

B-side The Fallout is a lot more colourful, bright synth strokes recalling Dark Sky’s earlier work while the glossy hooks are all Breach. Still lacking a little in terms of innovation, a pitch-bent melody that enters the fray four minutes changes the game, adding a refreshing woozy twist to the track’s final stretch. These are great club tracks but you’d expect more from such brilliant producers. For the DJs this might be just the ticket, but it’s certainly not a particularly memorable excursion in either artists’ impressive canon.

6/10