Gorgon City – Sirens

Tracks that will shine in front of large festival crowds…

Like a mirror being held up to the current UK dance-pop explosion comes the debut LP from duo Kye Gibbon and Matt Robson-Scott, AKA Foamo and RackNRuin, AKA Gorgon City.

Why wasn’t this released in time for the summer festival circuit? That remains a mystery, since each track is so clearly an anthemic hands-in-the-air jam that you can practically taste the sweaty tank tops, fingers forming heart shapes and Instagrammed shots of Ray Bans reflecting an MDMA-enhanced sunset.

Tracks such as ‘Ready For Your Love’ (featuring MNEK) and ‘Unmissable’ (with Zak Abel), of course, you’ll have heard countless times, and clean, accessible bass like this will always prove popular. But there are some unexpected bangers. ‘Go All Night’ featuring, oddly enough, Jennifer Hudson, is a glorious tribute to ’90s classics with its chord stabs, and previous single ‘Real’, with Yasmin, creeps along with that dank Black Butter edge that acts like My Nu Leng have teased out.

If this album is a mirror, then it’s also a hall of mirrors within itself – once you’ve heard one song, with that bouncy bass, you’ve heard them all. This is by no means a bad body of work – in general ‘Sirens’ is listenable and catchy, only it plays to an unexciting scene that is largely turning (like the victims of a Gorgon themselves) stagnant.

To be fair to the duo, they cut their teeth as Gorgon City playing to massive festival crowds, and these tracks will certainly shine in that arena. But they won’t break boundaries nor leave jaws hanging – and in this climate that’s exactly what these producers need to be doing. We need to demand more.

5/10

Words: Felicity Martin

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Related: In Conversation: Gorgon City

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Listen to ‘Sirens’ in full via Deezer, below…

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