Grab Her!

Primarily instrumental and unabashedly club-focused, "Grab Her!" functions as a gear shift inside the Settle tracklist — a pure dancefloor tool assembled with mechanical precision and considerable wit. The production combines a chopped, processed vocal sample with driving percussion in a way that strips house music to its fundamental proposition: here is a body, here is a beat, here is the instruction to move. There is a kind of playfulness in the exclamatory title and in the track's irrepressible forward momentum, the production refusing to permit hesitation or self-consciousness. Guy and Howard Lawrence demonstrate here that their understanding of club music extends beyond smooth pop-house crossover: they can build a spare, functional track with nothing extraneous retained. The kick drum anchors everything with four-on-the-floor authority; the percussion above it carries a specific loose-wrist swing that marks it as UK rather than American house production, something in the rhythmic sensibility that is distinctly British contemporary. The sample, pitched and processed until its source becomes almost indeterminate, does the work of a vocal hook without requiring lyrical content — the body of the voice rather than its meaning. This is music that would survive context, moving a floor in a warehouse or a boutique venue with equal authority, requiring nothing from the audience but willingness.