In the span of just over six months, Grecian producer George Lemos has quickly leaped from obscurity to rising star status. Along the way he helped put the Frankfurt-based label Be Chosen on the map with a keen 12″ collaboration with Chevy and garnered choice remixes of the “Lookooshere” EP from Anthony Collins, Art Bleek and one Wighnomy Brother. The white hot Cécille Records even launched their Numbers sub-label on the back of two of his solo singles. But every journey is not without its bumps in the road, and unfortunately Lemos’ “Faust EP” hosts a few of them.
Which isn’t to say “Faust EP” is without its highlights. “Tsitsi’s Dance” pulls a future primitive vibe by drizzling fuzzy and full-bodied synth stabs across scratchy, tightly-laced drum work. This carries over into “I Mousa Pu Gamousa,” which inverts its blunt and pumping melody and turns up the reverb, leaving dancers wondering how they suddenly ended up in the wake of a dub techno tune. Other moments on the EP leave me scratching my head as to what Lemos was thinking. It opens with the stuttering builds of “Noudle Soup,” cuts to a bouncy and unrelated second part, then tries to blend the two with stomach-turning results. Lemos uses these unexpected builds several times on the EP, each time more flow-disrupting than the last. Combined with a murky sound design, listeners have to jump a number of hurdles to fully enjoy the “Faust EP.” Still, at the rate Lemos is going, such early missteps could soon end up at the bottom of a tall stack of vinyl.
