Esquille

Equille is no doubt a well-known bastion of the EDM scene back in his native Sweden but he is a relative unknown further west. His album 'Rock This Club Down' is perfectly timed to take advantage of the flourishing European Dance scene and it is a good thing as it delivers David Guetta-type potential club classics right from the start.

The songs are very typically formulaic – two-step beats, warm sound effects, reverberating samples and a lot of ambience on every formatted loop – but there is a crispness in the notes that shows that Esquille is a top quality producer. He is weary to include sounds that compliment each other and he has not tried to be too outlandish in terms of style or arrangement. What he has put together is a range of neat anthems that keep spirits high and bodies moving.

Often times you get dance songs that utilise 808s that are so thunderous, they could blow the the glow stick right out of your hand or basses that slowly disintegrate your eardrums, but 'Rock This Club Down' is like an homage to the Chicago House of the late 80s in that it packs a wallop yet it is not so mealy and overpowering that you'd be in danger of leaving the club with a headache after listening to it on a night out.

Equille makes no attempt to hide the fact that this independent album was designed for the club scene – I mean, it's in the name, let alone the music. This is definitely what I like to call peak-of-the-night music: beginning and end of the night you typically get softer sounds out of the DJs but this is for when you want to bring the party into full swing and maintain its vibrancy until the wee hours of the morning. The synthesis used by Equille is zappy and grainy, the strings and keys are atmospheric and, best of all, it's all about the melodic tone so you needn't put up with the prospect of a load of cliché lyrics that boast about getting drunk and “partying all night.”