In the interest of, ahem, full disclosure, I must admit that, before now, I wasn’t entirely sold on Disclosure [Twitter/Facebook]. The duo’s earlier, more dubsteppy material (in particular, the double A-side Street Light Chronicle / Offline Dexterity) exposed me to a genre of music I wasn’t too familiar with at the time – I remain thus – and left me wanting more. It didn’t do as much for me as I’d hoped, but regardless, I’ve been keeping tabs on their work since then. They’ve been hard at work this year – aside from the new EP, there’s also been the small matter of their remix of Jessie Ware’s Running. It’s brilliant. Much the same can be said of The Face.

Hold on a second, though: I haven’t done an about-face (again with the puns) and finally started enjoying dubstep; it’s them that have changed, and their new sound is more house-influenced. That’s definitely something I can get on board with. Besides, when they have songs as effortlessly cool as  the Sinead Harnett-featuring lead track Boiling in their arsenal, it’s difficult to resist them. Their newest set of songs walks a fine line between beat-driven and melodic; at times,  there’s a lot more emphasis on rhythm and gradual progression, though when the hyperactive cut-up vocal samples of closing track Control arrive, they allow themselves to cut loose (with some assistance from Ria Ritchie), and the results are fantastic.

With the shift in sound has come a new understanding of dynamics; they know how to let their songs breathe. Lividup could probably get its business done in about four minutes if Disclosure were intent on overloading it and making it too busy, but instead, they let it go on past the six-minute mark, letting its subtle nuances swell and develop. This sort of music can  certainly go off (What’s in Your Head is sure to ignite dancefloors around the country), but Disclosure’s style isn’t garish and obvious, meaning that these new songs possess hidden depths that other artists in this genre may lack, and this helps them to stand out from the pack, as does the fact that The Face is the sound of them finally sounding sure of themselves. It’s both a reinvention and a statement of intent. It’s also very exciting.

http://soundcloud.com/greco-roman/disclosure-lividup

The Face is out now on Greco-Roman.