review
Dowden and Mazayr split Avalon instead of blending it
Avalon works because Dowden and Mazayr didn't merge into one sound for it. The title track is the handshake. The two solo cuts either side of it prove neither producer needed the other to carry a room.
deepmelodic
Balance Music put out three tracks on December 5, 22 minutes in total, and gave two producers one track each of their own to go with the one they made together. That's the whole shape of Avalon. Smarter than it sounds. Most collaborative EPs bury the collaborators inside each other's sound until you can't tell who built what. This one doesn't bother trying.
"Avalon," the title track, is the one to lead a set with. Seven and a half minutes, 120bpm, built in B major, and it opens sparse: just enough percussion to give the kick room to set the groove, with each new element brought in bar by bar instead of dropped in all at once. A low-pass filter sits over the top for that first minute, and when it pulls away, the head-nodding groove underneath is exactly what Dowden and Mazayr want to define the rest of the EP with. A bassline that keeps changing shape instead of repeating. Strings that climb rather than pad out the middle. The drums drop out and come back more than once, so it never spends toward one peak.
Then the EP splits down the middle. "Iris" is Dowden's alone. Tight, syncopated, built around a low end that never quite sits still, with percussion that would survive a bigger room than the rest of this record is aimed at. "Echoform" is Mazayr's. It's the mirror image: warmer, slower to open, the drums arriving late while the melody does the early work. Put those two next to each other and there's a clean line under what each producer does without the other in the room, which a full collaboration wouldn't have given us.
Dowden's been working out of Berlin for a few years now, since coming off two years with no fixed studio, and he's carried releases across labels like Mango Alley, Univack and Juicebox Music along the way. "Iris" gives every idea the bars it needs instead of rushing them, which is the surest sign of that stretch paying off. Mazayr's the newer name of the two, out of Manchester, a former drummer who's spent his run finding a sound of his own rather than borrowing someone else's. "Echoform" still sounds like a producer working out what a track can do once it stops chasing a drop. That's not a knock. It's the better track for it.
Balance's catalogue leans toward the Anjunadeep end of this beat rather than the Afterlife one: warm rooms, drums that serve a melody instead of running it. Avalon sits exactly on that shelf. It works anywhere with time to spend on a track — a slow rise before sunrise, a long open-air set, headphones on a drive with no fixed end. Not built for peak time. Doesn't try to be.
The formats do some of the arguing for us. Balance released all three tracks together and credited each one to whoever actually made it, rather than billing the whole thing as a duo record and letting one name carry two. A 22-minute EP gets to be exactly that instead of a lead single dressed up with two extras. Small decision. Right one.
We'd open with "Avalon," let that low-pass pull back into the groove right as the room needs somewhere to land, move to "Iris" once the floor's awake, and hold "Echoform" for the point where a room's ready to slow down without stopping. Not a small thing for a first collaboration to earn.