SEPALCURE at the Drake, Thursday, July 19. Rating: NNNN
New dance music styles are usually at their best in that brief window before they’re properly named and defined.
In the case of Brooklyn duo Sepalcure (aka Travis Stewart and Praveen Sharma), people throw around ambiguous terms like “future bass music”, but that’s just because you need to call it something.
What they actually sound like is a little bit of everything that’s ever rocked a dance floor. You hear elements of vocal house, R&B, 2-step, classic rave, IDM, UK funky, broken beat, techno, various permutations of dub and more, yet they still manage to come up with a cohesive sound that’s definitely theirs.
Stewart’s solo career as Machinedrum has been blowing up lately, in part aided by his productions for NYC MC Azealia Banks, but Sepalcure are a bit more under the radar still. Nevertheless, the pair perform live like they’re on a massive festival stage entertaining thousands, even for a two-thirds-full Drake Hotel.
No one would ever accuse them of phoning it in. Their onstage enthusiasm was contagious too: by the end of their set, everyone in the club was grinning as widely as the performers themselves.
