Disclosure

It’s been quite the year or so for Disclosure; the Surrey-born brothers, Guy and Howard Lawrence, have enjoyed major critical and commercial success with their debut record, Settle, an intriguing blend of garage and deep house that had enough of a pop sensibility to make them a firm fixture on UK radio. I’d say it’s hard to believe they’re so young - twenty-three and twenty, respectively - although that’d probably be disingenuous of me, given that they both look about twelve. Among their many live highlights of the past year or so - and there’s been plenty of them, given that they’ve toured prodigiously and played high-profile sets at the likes of Glastonbury and Coachella - came at the Parklife Weekender in Manchester, where they curated and headlined a huge outdoor stage on the Sunday. Despite the fact that they were effectively topping the bill on the second stage, the crowd voted with their feet, and the verdict was clear; Foals played what was ostensibly the festival’s headline set to a sparse main stage audience, whilst Disclosure played to vast valley of people, with many amongst them trying, and failing, to take up the high ground on the hill as the trough below swarmed with fans. To put it bluntly, they’ve got the world at their feet; their followers will be hoping that whatever they do next can be translated to the stage with as much energy as Settle.

Todd Edwards has cooked up a slew of stylistically variant dance tracks that are nothing but exciting and blissfully melodic. And while his musical forte is obviously grounded in electronic music he does not seem to be held down by this one genre. He has dabbled with power pop music as evidenced by his contributions to the “Hoodwinked” soundtrack and has even stepped into the role as a soul singer. Perhaps the most recognizable example of this was his guest appearance on the grammy winning Daft Punk track “Fragments of Time”. This song also is an testament of Edwards talent as a diverse songwriter. 12 years before this release he appeared on Daft Punk’s outstanding microsample hit “Face to Face”. His clandestine and confident vocals swept across clubs around the world.
Although a great deal of Edward’s popularity has arisen due to these Daft Punk contributions and his tangental relationships to other artists such as Sam Smith for which he remixed “Lay Me Down”, the real ingenuity of Edwards is best realized on his own releases. He deserves just as much credit for his glitchy club tracks like “Echo of the Past” than he does for any of his collaborative efforts.
Despite Todd Edward's deviation in indie guitar pop, expect to find nothing but a bona fide DJ performance at one of his shows. He is one of a few DJs who still sports a turntable and who actually knows how to use it! It is an absolute thrill to see him mix and manipulate his catalogue of both obscure and popular sounds. The crowd can simply not contain themselves and once again hail to the one they call “Todd the God”.