[Rush Hour Recordings]

Save for his steady stream of remix work, it’s been almost three years since we last heard new material from Recloose. So it’s welcoming, then, that his return on Rush Hour shows the producer functioning at a typically high creative point. There has always been a playful side to Matt Chicoine that shines through in his music, a feeling that no matter how hard he’ll make you want to dance and move, the chances are it will be with a big smile on your face while you’re doing it. It’s been there since the beginning of his career (evidenced on the recently released Early Works collection also on Rush Hour) and his playful nature is writ large all over “Electric Sunshine,” an easy-going, dreamy fuzz of gently ambling, arpeggiated bass, bright rays of going-nowhere-fast synths and vocal swatches floating through the track like rising cinders from the hearth.

Chicoine’s manifesto kicks up a gear for the rest of the EP, “Parquet” taking the spirited vibe of “Electric Sunshine” and animating it with a more up-tempo beat, rejigging those arpeggiated bass notes into equally bouncy synth keys, and firing off alternate vocal missives with a great deal more velocity and purpose. It becomes more apparent as the EP goes on that Chicoine’s Saturday Night Manifesto is in fact charting the bliss of an unhinged, weekend night escape from the pressures of the mind, and with “Tecumseh” he manages to throw off the shackles completely. In keeping with the other tracks, the main melody lines are made up of arpeggiated instruments, although here the rapid-fire, electro bass drilling downward spirals into a mine field of whip-like percussion. To temper the acute bass line is a series of wisp-ish, angelic choral notes and, as the track evolves, a classic chord progression that reminds us that Recloose’s manifesto is all about having a good time. Just to cover all bases, “Tecumseh” also appears as a bonus beat, perhaps for the last part of the night where the singular focus of sweating it out for the rhythm itself becomes a priority. Recloose shows himself to be on top form with his latest that will hopefully spawn many more pontifications on his various views and mind states.