Saturday Night Gym Club – How To Build A Life Raft EP

Water. That’s what you hear. Not “current” or “waves” because those imply only single forms of water. It has many, after all. A lot of the time it just creeps up on ya, like a brewing rainstorm. You don’t notice it at first, as it’s just clouding over. Maybe a slight drizzle starts up; suddenly, it’s pouring.

Like melodic dubstep. The infinitely more tolerable cousin to the current “it” sub-genre, melodic dubstep has been inching its way into mainstream consciousness for a few years now. Dubstep proper has, unfortunately, eased itself into the pop zeitgeist so it was only a matter of time before offshoots followed. But unlike dub, its relative is not an over-caffeinated annoyance.

Instead, acts like Blackmill and Anglo-Irish start-ups Saturday Night Gym Club have (thankfully) taken the hyperactive electronic squeaks and squonks down a notch and created a candy-cane swirl of lush white noise. SNGC’s debut EP, How To Build A Life Raft, is just that, too: lush. Drums click and clack, synths rock back and forth, and vocals float atop a haze of fizzy… water. And it’s all mixed together into an opulent, unbridled bubble bath of sound. ‘Green Light,’ for example, opens with a swaying synth line riding over skittering hi-hats before the drums calm into a simple 4/4 rave beat. ‘The Ballroom Scene,’ conversely, starts out similarly – a stuttering beat and churning electronics – but retains its whitecap-esque personality throughout in much the same way you’d keep pace with your partner, on – you guessed it – the ballroom floor.

But the theme of water goes beyond the music, or even the obvious reference in the EP’s title. Much like the image of an endless ocean the music conjures up, the lyrics suggest infinite longing in the abyss: “Dear stranger, I’ve missed you all my life”, “I’m your voyeur/I’ve been here for years”, and “Move across the ballroom like your life depends on it”. Not to be left out, the vocals are every bit as expressive as anything else to be found here. On ‘This One Will,’ guest vocalist Chagall repeats “I’ve missed you…” not as simply a statement of fact, but as an admission to herself that she’s clearly been ignoring for years. Emotion, after all, can be as boundless as any ocean.