A word like Block promises something rigid. Fractures hands you the opposite inside of two seconds: a mid-range figure, then the bottom sliding in underneath it warm and already moving. I was in before I had decided anything.
What holds me is the shape of that low end. At 120 the easy call is four to the floor, which he never plays. The bass lands on the downbeat, again on the eighth right behind it, then leaves the following beat alone. Two hits and a hole, over and over, so the groove keeps tipping forward without catching up to itself. The vocal sits up top from the first bar rather than waiting for an entrance.
The turn comes at 1:54, where the sub falls away and the bright end goes with it, leaving the voice to carry fifteen seconds mostly alone. Then at 2:09 everything cuts. A quarter second of nothing, and the last section lands thicker in the mids than anything before it.
Next Summer is his third album, written, produced and performed by Mark Zito, and Block sits third on it. MrSuicideSheep ran the track in late June, which is how it reached me and how I ended up deep in his catalogue.
The ending is the best call on the record. At 2:42 the drums quit, one low tone holds a few seconds longer, and the song lets go rather than finishing. Nothing resolves. It just stops leaning.
