Joe Goddard – Taking Over EP

Label: Greco-RomanScore: 7.5/10

In the electronic music world, synthesisers are a way of life. Joe Goddard – of Hot Chip and The 2 Bears fame – is aiming to bring a bit of beauty to what can be a clinically digital scene. Taking Over, his latest EP for the eclectic Greco-Roman collective, strives to tug at the heartstrings while retaining the essence of nightlife energy.

She Burns goes great lengths to realising this ambition – Mara Carlyse’s vocal delivery is initially so fragile that want to climb into your speakers to cradle her in your arms, this chrysalis then unfurling into a ethereal array of fuzz and twinkles.

The more determined Bassline ’12 keeps up this shimmering atmosphere, with dappling arpeggios dancing around tight electro percussion. In comparison, Step Together – featuring veteran producer Boris Dlugosch – feels relatively unadventurous and out of place, treading the path of familiar piano led house.

Finishing up, title track Taking Over has a curiously end-of-night reflective mood, this for a piece whose motivation is that moment when a night has you firmly in its grasp. Still, the easy going keys and lazy guitar serves as an apt piece of punctuation for a collection that wears its heart on its sleeve.