Avilo "Easy 15"

Electronic music always has an influx of new talent and fresh faces. One of the latest is Avilo, hailing from the U.K. Fresh means fresh: their first release was in 2007 and their biography isn't even up on their label's website yet. While slightly mysterious, Avilo's skills certainly haven't gone unnoticed. Their spooky tech banger 'Rubicon' is getting plays from John Digweed and is featured on Anthony Pappa's mix album 'Moments'. They've also just finished remixing Nick Muir's latest 'Airtight' and Progressive-Sounds' own Chloe Harris has given them the thumbs-up. Now Avilo's latest, 'Easy 15' is out on Vapour Recordings with a superb remix by Kasey Taylor.

Starting with a low kick and a little extra fill that bounces off a boisterous snare, Avilo's original mix of 'Easy 15' holds back with only background fills and pieces of the melody, bleating out synths with a sleek laidback sexiness. As the synths syncopate against the rest of the track, it all makes sense when Avilo drops the bass, a line of pure funk. As background fills twitter up and around the track and shining synths chime in to note the phrases, Avilo carries things to a breakdown when the synths extend into droning white noise and the track sweeps back to a bulbous bass line and finally introduces the vocal, a stream of consciousness and internal thoughts. As the melody and bassline rise back into the mix, the vocals continue: a story of bad dreams and oddly shaped houses. The track peaks one more time when the synths blur together again, and Avilo slowly turns down the hats and begins to close the track, finishing by abruptly dropping all but the kick, a monotone bass line and some minimal hats. This track is unique in its structure; not epic in nature, it is a solid groove for extended periods because Avilo has shown you their hand earlier in the mix. The vocal isn't introduced until almost halfway into the mix and while it provides a strong contrast in style to the rest of the track, it still works. It might even be easy to sneak another track in that listeners would think goes along with the vocal.

Speaking of contrasts, Kasey Taylor's accompanying remixes differ greatly from Avilo's original, transforming the heady white noise of the synths in the original into sustained swelling in a progressive house track. After beginning with a heavy kick and muffled fills galloping in stereo around the mix, Taylor introduces a muffled back-and-forth bassline on the offbeat with the hats, and as cavernous fills help maintain and transition each phrase, Taylor builds a little tension by dropping the kick outright before the snare enters. In Taylor's remix the snare really emphasizes its seesaw nature, seemingly halting the bassline and adding swing. When the fills become a little more confident, they begin to coax the synths back out of hiding, throbbing frenetically as Taylor lays a matching form of the bassline with a brighter EQ on top. The hats finally make their full appearance when the track swoops into full swing, fleshing out the top end of the track as it hits its groove momentarily, the bleating synths from the original gluing the track together. The vocal enters as the track breaks down, rebuilding slowly from the bottom. This part of the track is great; like the original mix, Taylor maintains the feeling of mixability in his remix by creating a great transition under the vocal.

As the track rides the bassline and percussion, the long synths come back in with the vocal; when a quiet sparse piano meekly enters the mix, Taylor EQs the synths with a pulse that beats along with the percussion and bassline, becoming the heart of the track as the morphs into a living entity, a hive of sound. In Avilo's original mix, the vocals are a contrast to the deep, even slightly electro-house nature of the track but here their rambling, almost soothing nature complements the drawn-out synths that flow through the track. This is the house that atmospheric-progressive built, getting lost in your headphones or on some dark dance floor. Kasey Taylor's instrumental is a carbon copy of his remix sans any vocal, useful if you are looking to forgo that mixable contrast the vocal provides in the middle of Kasey's remix.

It should be no surprise that the likes of Greg Benz and others have latched onto Avilo's style; 'Easy 15' is a release that has what many want: a solid, versatile original mix that one can drop in a variety of sets, complementary remixes that really take the track elements in a different direction, and DJ-friendly mixability not just in intros and outros, but even mid-track. Don't miss out on 'Easy 15’ if you need an ace up your sleeve in the club, or in your play list at home.