Bleep

Dam Mantle follows up his 2012 album Brothers Fowl on Notown with a three-track EP for the label. It's a lot more expansive as a release than such a short tracklisting might imply though. Each of the over-six-minute pieces of music that makes up Heavy Velvet Affair ripple with character and show a producer with a keen flair for moody but refined electronic music. Created alongside a team of mysterious collaborators as Dam Mantle and the Free Association, it's bigger and looser in scope than a lot of the fine production miniatures he has put out in the past. The title track displays The Free Association's lightness of touch perfectly, swirling pads and breezy piano keys blended with elegantly rolling beats. It's a special kind of alchemy achieved here, the pace sharp but at the same time wide-eyed and dream-like. 'Simultaneous' - which features the shadowy Baker - wraps hollowed out percussion in stirring ambience and keeps fluttering to ever greater heights, while the 'Underlying Issue' changes tact and sees the collective turning in a slinky piece of simmering techno.