The Brooklyn-based label Scissor & Thread returns with their first release of 2016, and who better to kick things off than their very own Frank & Tony. Francis Harris and Anthony Collins run Scissor & Thread with Halcyon record store owner Shawn Schwartz, and Atlanta’s SOCO Audio owner Michael Scott. As Frank & Tony, the pair makes an ultra sophisticated and seductive brand of house/dance music that we can’t seem to get enough of, and their new 12″ Waiting Ground is no exception!
The EP’s title track sublimates languourous keys and piano into a tantalizingly hazy night-time melody and sets it in motion with an exhilarating rhythm that is perfect for stepping out in style. Also, included on the release is Frank & Tony’s edit of Donato Wharton‘s beautiful track “Absentia“, off the producer’s 2006 electronic album Body Isolations. Fashioning that track’s ambience into throbbing bass loops and rusted piano notes, sometimes animated by a muffled kick with crisp snares and clap, they also keep their re-work sparse and open with plenty of negative space helping to build the cut’s understated tension. Vinyl versions of the 12″ will include the track “Ebreo“, otherwise, digital copies will only include the three songs below–with “Pavane” closing things out. Here a gritty kick drives crepuscular keys until the simmering resonance of hi-hats adds a kinetic lightness to the track. By its end, though, this forward motion tails off into a warm buzz of white noise and the crumbling notes of a half-remembered piano refrain you might still hear echoing in your head on the way home from the club.
