CREEP is a partnership between established Brooklyn-based DJs Lauren Flax and Lauren Dillard. On their debut LP, Echoes, a string of guest vocalists crucially help to infuse Flax and Dillard’s dark electronica with a human touch. CREEP have released a handful of singles over the past three years, all of which are included on the album. Continuing in the manner of these singles, Echoes widely employs eerie trip-hop backbeats and gothic minimalism. Skittering percussion lines pop up here and there, but the pulse is usually too disjointed for dancing.
By the record’s third-quarter the murky atmospherics start to lose breath, but there are a number of memorable cuts. Second track, Vertigo, features Lamb’s Lou Rhodes, whose elegant presence gives the delicate number a hypnotic substance. CREEP’s 2010 debut single Days, a collaboration with the XX’s Romy Madley Croft, still surges with hook-laden alarm. On Call Her, Tricky’s slinking whisper is melodically supplemented by the ethereal vocals of Alejandra de la Deheza (School of Seven Bells) and the track placidly alludes towards a grimey underbelly. Flax’s past collaborator, Sia Furler (she co-wrote Sia’s 2009 single You’ve Changed) shows up on the album closing power-ballad Dim The Lights. One of the record’s lesser successes, the song urgently shoots for the stars, yet the emotional target feels somewhat abstract. Echoes shows that CREEP understand how to evoke an image of a maligned reality, where beauty must fight against machine manipulation. However, the formula does become slightly tired before the record’s conclusion.
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
Best Track: Vertigo
If You Like These, You’ll, Like This: Crazy Clown Time DAVID LYNCH, Aquemini OUTKAST, Mezzanine MASSIVE ATTACK
In A Word: Disquiet
