Decius - Decius Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience) Review

Decius’ Vol. II is luscious, complex, and beautifully uncomfortable.

Decius have snuck up on us all, but by now they have become impossible to ignore. Jumping straight to number two in the UK dance charts – it would have easily been deserving of a number one spot – this Vol. II, rather aptly subtitled Splendour & Obedience, will prove to even the staunchest of disbelievers that what started as an acid house-laced divertissement from members of Trashmouth Records, Paranoid London, and Fat White Family has by now turned into an ambitious and challenging project, and a true force to be reckoned with. Growth is the name of the game with this second full-length record, which comes in a beautifully curated double-vinyl edition (the aesthetics are important, with this outfit more than ever) and represents a step forward from both the band’s previous albums and the handful of EPs they have delivered thus far, in every possible sense. There is a greater complexity, compositionally, to all tracks – more layers, more flourishes, more structure – that in places borders on the baroque, in a good way; there are pieces of the record which step away from its overall flow to toy with a more standard song-like structure, with excellent results (Walking in the Heat is a sweet earworm with a sharp edge; Queen of 14th St somehow evokes memories of Bowie’s Sweet Head while sounding nothing like it).

There is, also, a greater inclination for experimentation. The band’s previous offerings felt delightfully nostalgic, a nod to something almost entirely lost that would have struck a chord with every lover of old-school acid house: indeed, the very first term of comparison coming to mind upon a first listen of the early Decius EPs was, perhaps inevitably, the track that started it all, Maurice’s legendary This is Acid. This energy – this desire to strip that visceral, throbbing acid house core of all later additions and fripperies and rediscover the primal energy behind its heartbeat – is still there, but some of the tracks in this new record read like club music for a new era, as fond of DIY and as unrepentantly true to itself as its forebears, but looking ahead, rather than backwards. Listen to Arctic Spring, which closes the record almost as a declaration of intents, perhaps a springboard (no pun intended) for future endeavours, and you will hear that experimentation at work, with that most classic of beats gradually evolving into something altogether different as the track’s intensity mounts, and the most interesting, inventive vocals in the whole record. The whole thing feels luscious and indulgent, like there was no restraint whatsoever in its creation and no restraint whatsoever is expected in its enjoyment.

This ties into what ultimately is the greatest strength of this album and of Decius overall as a project. In the last decades, and perhaps already from the Noughties onwards, EDM as a whole has become increasingly defanged and declawed: it might be more polished, and it might be more accessible, but that palpable undercurrent of threat and discomfort which was ultimately what made its musical experimentation thrilling is almost entirely gone. Born as the playground of the freaks and the misfits, the genre nowadays feels increasingly like a toy for rich young people, a device allowing its end users to feel transgressive without truly flirting with danger. With its shamelessly sexual (and often queer and kinky) aesthetics, its being incessantly dotted with panting and moaning, its rediscovery of the deep thrumming of the primordial house beat, its ability to evoke the sweat and the sleaze of old-school clubs, and its absolute refusal to tone anything down in the name of the comfort of its audience, Decius’ music feels dangerous as this kind of music should be; it has a palpable, pervasive sense of pushing boundaries that tugs at something visceral, and purely instinctual, in a listener’s mind. It is music to get lost in; it is music to help you forget yourself – and discover something uncomfortable about yourself in the process. It is quite clear, after all, that this is an outfit which has absolutely zero qualms about making the audience squirm. We Carry Our Flamboyance As a Warning, one of the titles – leading into a particularly sticky bit of acid house goodness – admonishes. If you choose to still enter Decius’ house of dark delights, you can’t complain that you haven’t been told.