The Best EPs of 2021
Written, Designed by Nathan Evans
Every year, certain special EPs can remind us that some artists can achieve more than most artists’ albums can with a handful of tracks. Dance music, as expected in the arena of smaller releases, ruled the roost this year. As dancefloors tentatively flashed back into life, producers that had been cooped up for too long were finally ready to unleash their new weapons.
Honourable mentions to 96 Back for his Flex Time EP, Disclosure’s Never Enough, as well as abstract hip-hop producer The Alchemist’s This Thing Of Ours and Olympic-themed Carry The Fire projects.
As I learnt in my interview with the London producer for Clash, Fiyahdred is an aficionado of UK funky. The club style reached its mainstream peak in the late 2000s but has been kept alive in the underground ever since.
Released on Hyperdub Records (the label of Mr William Bevan aka Burial), Fiyahdred’s 'Anyway' EP provides a spacey, hazy take on UK funky that marks a renewed impetus. The self-assured lead single ‘Anyway (Do It)’ offers mantric lyrics snaking through the track in a manner between spoken word and rapping. ‘Da Mellowdee’ is a preamble that drops you right into the middle of an after-hours set with its spooky flourishes, and ‘Tumpin’’ dishes out a jerkier, skittering rhythm that ping-pongs off the bassline.
Though in no way a tribute to UK funky, Anyway is a baton-clutching release that embeds its roots in its history, while reaching out towards something greater.
Concept-driven dance music is hard to come by, especially when it’s a fantasy as deliciously depraved as LSDXOXO’s. The Berlin-based artist’s XL debut projects intense, graphic sexuality in an almost punkish way. Even with the cool-headed techy closer ‘Mutant Exotic’, the persona never pulls away from focus: “Everything I do is a little bit demonic”. Aptly, Dedicated 2 Disrespect is a set of contraptions that move the entire body.
The meat of the EP (‘Baby’ and ‘Sick Bitch’) is tethered together with erotic quivering samples, but the former beat reinforces the latter. ‘Baby’ is a forceful breakbeat that cracks like a fleet of whips, and the ear-grabbing acid synth of ‘Sick Bitch’ covers deadpan lyrics like a set of bedsheets, with only the most suggestive of phrases (squirting, gag-reflexes, exploding all over clothes) popping out from the mix. This is all without mentioning the crunching Chicago house of ‘The Devil’, a track in which LSDXOXO treats the big-horned ruler of the underworld as a mere PayPig.
Dedicated 2 Disrespect is dance music encouraging you to give in to your innermost sins and desires. And LSDXOXO is addictive, enough to make listeners downright submissive.
salute knows a good classic when he sees one. The Austria-come-Manchester producer fed the streets with a free pack of remixes on Bandcamp, but the hidden ambition in these edits is how he handles theoretically untouchable material with incredible finesse.
In a very tricky feat, he manages to jack up two modern R&B standards - Frank Ocean’s ‘White Ferrari’ and SZA’s ‘Good Days’ - without losing the original soul of each track. Every element across the EP sounds crisp and optimised for maximum results, such as when he slices up the iconic instrumental of Erykah Badu’s ‘Didn’t Cha Know’ in a way that still preserves the smoky atmosphere of Badu’s song.
Adding glass keys to punctuate the vocals on UK bass anthem T2’s ‘Heartbroken’, the neck-snapping propulsion of his reimagining is an ample substitute if you don’t have a fighter jet to hand. Finally, on top of all this, he introduces many to a classic that many are likely not aware of. Brazilian singer Claudia Telles’ ‘And I Love Her’ - a Beatles cover from 1977 - is double-timed using steam train-like rolling percussion, rippling bass and wisps of her voice.
A great remix takes the existing song and raises it to 110%, giving that little bit extra. With his edits, salute doesn’t just add to these songs, he multiplies them.
Manchester DJ Anz became a star of lockdown for her 2020 Spring/Summer Dubs mix on Soundcloud. Now backed by the illustrious Ninja Tune label, her music has taken on leaps and bounds this year. In a somewhat overdone concept, the All Hours EP chronicles the stages a night out from day-drinking to lights-up, but it allows her to place UK bass, 2-step garage, breakbeat and even Latin freestyle next to each other. The unique congregation of styles puts the EP in a space all on its own, tied together with sparkling synths, bounding bass hits and a cosmopolitan swagger.
Equally, there’s a perfect balance between pop sensibilities and tracks for the nitty-gritty. The glamorous production and hook of ‘You Could Be’ deserves chart success, whereas the one-two of ‘Inna Circle’ and ‘Last Before Lights’ is a heads-down finish of thumping kicks, rattling breakbeats and countless movements that come in to breathe new life to an already-boisterous atmosphere. If you’re wanting a night on the slosh, All Hours is absolutely up for it.
The title of Sam Gellaitry’s fourth EP is somewhat of a misnomer, because IV is a complete reinvention from his previous trio. Here, the Scottish producer moves from inventive wonky beats to synth-funk songwriting, and it just so happens that he has struck gold at the first try.
Sam’s wide-eyed, intensely-stimulated style is retained but pruned to its best parts to accommodate his own vocals, which are layed down with an endearingly thick Scottish accent. The thematically-relevant opener ‘A New Dawn’ opens with a perfect harmony of his old bass beats and climactic synthwork, raising the stakes from the get-go while being a quality track on its own. ‘Games’ follows a similar style with jangly guitar, and highlights the very sucked-in, Jai Paul-ian mixing used on the project. There’s an energising way in which elements swooping in and past one another to create an abundance of sonic shrapnel.
On the other stylistic side of the EP, IV morphs into pop and disco numbers that take only one hit to stick around in your system. Moreover, his songwriting is a merger of cool and cheesy as perfect as what a 2001 Daft Punk would cook up with the Weeknd of today. ‘Duo’’s muscly groove is one of the best of the year, and ‘Assumptions’ has a flared synth riff that will live in your head rent-free. All the while, his voice glows with silver whenever he hits the chorus harmonies.
One can rightly feel weary when a producer tries their hand at singing, but the marriage between old and new exhibited here genuinely feels like the next progression of maximalist dance music - from vintage-era Basement Jaxx to Justice’s first album to Rustie’s Glass Swords, to this. For the way it tactically pushes the nostalgic buttons in this way, as well as drafting in quality songwriting and the wonky and future bass he is known for, IV feels like a new step. It is the EP of 2021 that best sets a course, a plan of action for where electronic music can go, and the more Gellaitry expands on this newfound direction, the brighter the future looks.