The House That Disclosure Built

The touch paper for the house-pop explosion came in October 2012, when Disclosure's 'Latch' entered the UK Singles Chart at number 11. Top 10 hits such as 'White Noise' and 'You & Me' followed, before Duke Dumont scored two consecutive UK number ones. Then, in May of last year, Disclosure's debut album Settle charted at UK number 1. Fast forward through a cavalcade of radio hits from Gorgon City, Route 94, MK and more, and Clean Bandit's 'Rather Be' becomes both the most-streamed and fastest-selling single of 2014, shifting a huge 163,000 copies in the first week and 1 million by it's 5th. It was the biggest weekly sale for a January Number 1 in the UK since Babylon Zoo's 'Spaceman', in 1996.

This new form of house music is on the verge of becoming the dominant sound in mainstream pop on sides of the pond. Some will breathe a sigh of relief, as with the rise of house comes the demise of Guetta electro, Ameri-trance and various other form of Will.I.Am—era cack that's clogged our radio frequencies for over half a decade now. Not only that, but their replacement is the greatest goddamn sound in the world. That rich, groovy, spiritual sound that radicalised many, and entertained more.

The thing is, he who hosts the party picks the music, and our current hosts are Disclosure. All hail Guy and Howard Lawrence, dance music's Pinky and Perky. What a treat it would be to one day spot them whizzing by in the Perk-mobile; poot-pooting from street to street like a couple of cheeky cock-weasels, their linen-scented Habitat-house blaring from a comically small stereo.

The Disclosure phenomenon (or Dis-house, as we'll be calling it here) is essentially the "dance music for indie boys" trend taken to its natural conclusion. Disclosure's songs may begin life on the piano, but it feels more like the wailing banality of Keane than the majestic stride of Marshall Jefferson. In an inversion of the DJ-slash-producer anonymity tradition, they are marketed like a band: a dynamic duo whose live sets are purpose-built proof that they are "real musicians", as if electronic artists are not. Like all indie boys, too, Disclosure are retro-internet magpies. As one Dissensus forum-er said: "The internet is a huge dressing up box… I'll put on that dubstep bass, that rave piano, that hardcore breakbeat, that garage vocal treatment."

Disclosure are the product of what the late 00s UK music press christened "bass music"; a term which emerged in the genre-conflating climate that bore the post-dubstep sensibility. From a rough starting point of Joy Orbison's exquisite underground hit 'Hyph Mngo', these early days saw house beats and 2-step rhythms spliced with dubstep's bass-weight, but somewhere along the way bass music's relationship with house was severed. A few evolutionary stages down the line, the genre splintered into various different sub-forms including by far its most dodgy offshoot, "future garage". Disclosure are the house baby of this genre. What this means is that, not only are Disclosure wringing out house, but in perpetuating the future garage debacle they are also fucking with the legacy of garage: the UK's last and possibly finest period of homegrown, underground-to-chart music which was everything that Dis-house is not: vital, organic, progressive.

It doesn't help matters that instead of figures from the dance world, Disclosure collaborate with indie stars like "art rock band" London Grammar, Friendly Fires' Ed MacFarlane or dishwater R&B like AlunaGeorge. In ignoring house music proper, they are aligning themselves with the likes of Jamie Woon (a Disclosure favourite) who, likewise, decontextualises urban genres whilst taking dubstep, house and garage at their most prescriptive and mechanical. All told, in both taste and execution, the brothers are total rockists. This wonder-quote from Howard says it all: "We're trying to bring class and soul into the song writing… using jazz chords that have emotion… You can play 'Latch' in a massive nightclub or cover it in a jazz ensemble."