One Night in the Borough

Some musicians find a thing, do it well, keep doing it well, and that’s that. For the Scottish duo of Craig Smith and Graeme Clark, it’s making slow disco house that perfectly captures the romantic dreaming of US street scenes that Scots do so well: a disco parallel to The Jesus & Mary Chain’s Velvet Underground dreams, maybe. A bassline, a kick drum, a handclap, a snatch of dialogue or a radio, a chord drifting in here and there — that’s it. A perfect distillation. Their tracks almost never go over 120bpm, and are often way under, yet they have more party energy than many records that are a lot more manic. There are 14 tracks on this album, each one just another disco house groove that feels like it’s been snipped from one that is rolling along endlessly in some mythical space. “I don’t care how I get there but I got to make this journey” goes the vocal sample in “B.U.R.T. - The Journey” and it’s perfect. The journey — the groove that moves forever — is the only purpose here.