In 2021, Apiento and Lexx got together with guitarist Simone Cartia and singer Kat Armanious for a summery, street soul-flavoured tune, titled Weekend Waiting. The same team have now released a follow-up, Body Talk. While the vocal is undoubtedly R&B-based, the music – like Apiento’s recent collaboration with Andrew Hale and Laura Groves – Tied – has gone beyond that tried and tested template. Just like that previous single, the new song is another exercise in soothing, massaging musical minimalism. Posing the question, “How much can you strip away, and still retain the soul?” Here the answer is everything save a slow, melodic, modular LFO. A wonderfully warm descending bass drone, coloured only by jazzy finger snaps and snatches of echo. The 7” serves up two mixes, but allows you to download several others, including dubs, instrumentals, and an acapella. The 303 Dub is my favourite. Its little acidic interjections are a nod to mid-90s chillout rooms and “ambient” techno. Stuff that I somewhat nostalgically seem to have been back into for a bit. 

All of this makes for a soundtrack suitable for softly lit seductions, and definite sunset cocktail ingredients. However, then there’s the System Mix. This one boasts a big rattling drum break and booming bleep b-line. Sexy and seismic, similar to Crooked Man’s Earth Angel, imagine if Bomb The Bass had been produced at FON and signed to Warp.

Leisure Dub’s Body Talk is out now on Test Pressing Catalogue.