Review Summary: With only four tracks to this EP, British electronic artist Draper is able to show how he can make an amazing blend of liquid step and chill-wave that creates a relaxing and enjoyable collective of tracks.
Summer is the perfect season for chilled out electronic music, something you can just have in the background while you're swimming, or something to play while you're having a few drinks with friends. While there are many artists I can recommend for such experiences, but Draper by far is one of the best. With only a handful of songs to his name, Draper was picked up by UK clothing brand Drop Dead in 2011 to create this great collection of only a few tracks.
Starting with 'Illusion', the EP begins with a great organ synth that just builds up until the beat hits and the repeated vocals come in. This continues until the synth becomes a lot sharper and the vocals sort of resonate in the background with lots of echo, reverb and delay. These vocals become a great melodic voice part that is mashed up to be completely unclear lyrically, and while people think this is a bad thing, it is a great component of this genre, though it makes singing along interesting with people sort of humming or trying to sing these disjointed vocals. The song eventually slows down to have longer tones in the vocal part and a slightly discordant synth part beneath, although synths in music like this usually don't do this, I really rate it as it mixes the track up a bit, making it unpredictable and somewhat reminding me of Crystal Castles. The song then goes back into its previous faster dance vibe.
The next song is 'Painting the Sky', is probably the most popular song on the EP with a decent amount of YouTube hits. Beginning with a driving beat, great synth lines and a great vocal line saying 'The Sun Goes Down', his track differs from the prior track, in that the vocal line is very smooth, with a slow piano part accompanying it, but is great to sing along with, having a distinctively recognizable lyrics. Painting the Sky is a great dance song, that goes perfectly with a sunset, and not just because of its relatable lyrics, the song itself is just so chill, yet so active you can still dance to it. Like before this song also has parts with more distorted synths that accompany the vocal saying 'we all drop dead', such harshness contrasts well with the rest of the song which is calm and happy.
The third track of the EP, 'Triller', uses brass synth with a slower hip hop reminiscent beat which then becomes some pretty insane dub step sounds that layer well on top of the track, showing another side of what Draper can do in different types dance music. This song boasts a lot of synth parts, but isn't one of those over the top Skrillex like dub step songs, giving a perfect amount of wobble bass while providing the listener with a good dance track, however it does contain those generic dub step voice overs which some people think are tacky, but I personally don't mind. I love this song, I mean with only a few songs on this EP, one cant really choose a defining standout track, but in terms of production, this song combines the most interesting synth parts to do some cool laid back things, great song.
The final track of Drapers short EP, 'The Storm', introduces more disjointed chill wave vocals and is a lot like 'Illusion' with bright synths and vocal jitters happening at any given time. Another great song, but there isn't too much to say about here without bringing up what I've said about the other songs above, all in all it is still great though.
I could say the only problem with this EP is that there aren't enough songs, but I always love EPs because the small track listing means that artists must put the best material possible on it and have no low points, which provides for great consistency. These tracks are great for dancing to, or just sitting back and relaxing, making Draper is a solid dance artist and I hope he can grace our ears with more cool chilled out beats in the future and hopefully make an album that cam live up to or raise the bar on the standard set by this awesome EP.
