The cover art of Disclosure’s Energy depicts the electronic music duo’s signature masked silhouette embedded in a unified landmass that’s beginning to break apart. The album itself creates a diasporic sound that foregrounds the origins of a plethora of musical genres—and, by extension, the first record of human life. Collaborating with a guest list composed entirely of artists of color—most of them Black, two from Cameroon and Mali—and pulling from the long stylistic history of hip-hop, R&B, and West African pop-rock, brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence apply their distinct brand of house music to these myriad styles, syncing everything up into a combustible, richly layered party record.
Without ever allowing their own sound to be rendered anonymous, they let each guest artist imprint their personal or geographic influence on Energy. Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara, with whom the pair previously collaborated on “Ultimatum,” pays tribute to her country and continent on the propulsive “Douha (Mali Mali),” repeating the names of both countless times as the brothers douse the proceedings in slip-sliding, liquid bass patterns. Elsewhere, the brash confidence of rappers Aminé and Slowthai accelerates the already breakneck speed of “My High” into overdrive, while R&B’s laxest ladies, Kehlani and Syd, harmonize on “Birthday,” their chemistry enveloping the song’s what-if daydream.
Energy, like the most successful house music, is full of sustained tension, its insistent 4/4 beats punctuated by laser synth stabs on songs like “Lavender” and the title track. In contrast to 2015’s overstuffed Caracal, Energy clocks in at a compact 40 minutes and utilizes canny mid-song fadeouts that act as temporary reprieves from an onslaught of beats. Similarly, two interludes move at a luxurious clip, bolstering the album’s prolonged sense of feverish hustle.
The album also finds Disclosure more fully exploring drum n’ bass, a genre in which they’d previously only dabbled. They effortlessly make the glitchy sound their own, most prominently on “Who Knew” and “Birthday,” whose delayed, free-wheeling basslines are matched by complementary hi-hats. These taut, highly charged tracks maintain Energy’s BPMs while offering a more minimalist aesthetic that reinforces the album’s multifaceted scope.
Energy demands your attention with inviting, joyous beats and its vocalists’ direct appeals. On the strutting opening track, “Watch Your Step,” Kelis implicates the listener in her quest to escape isolation and let loose on the dance floor: “You make me watch your step when you move/Now what you’re doing is making me move/With you.” Likewise, Eric Roberts, the motivational preacher first heard on Settle’s “When a Fire Starts to Burn,” implores us to “listen to [him], bring it in” on the title track, while up-and-comer Channel Tres dares us to “get closer, baby” before then playfully tossing off, “Tell the boys to bring the clap back in” at the end of “Lavender”—instructions, of course, that the Lawrence brothers heed.
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