There’s a realm of minimalist, heartfelt electronic-R&B that only a hand of acts are privy to: Basecamp, RITUAL, Lyves, Majik, and our key figure here, San Scout, have all come to the fore of this thoroughly contemporary genre. The duo of Freddie Clough and Jonny Woodley have been knocking around the blogosphere for the past two years and last year we saw the release of San Scout’s carefully crafted EP1, featuring singles ‘Render’ and ‘Get Me By’. Since the start of 2017, the South East musicians have been keeping us on the hook. First, it was the brooding-yet-poppy ‘In / Balance’, then the reverb guitar rich ‘LMS’, and as we approach the tail end of ‘17, we have a third contender - ‘You Instead’. As the streaming hashtag indicates, ‘You Instead’ is “alternative”, at least from San Scout’s usual sound. It shows a softer, more reflective side to the pair’s songwriting. The opening acoustic guitar transports the listener back to that early writing process, before the track blooms into dreamy synths more familiar to fans of the band. Throughout these electronic sweeps and digital beats rise up in emotive intensity and other times slip away to reveal a delicate piano arrangement. ‘You Instead’ lulls the listener with this hypnagogic composition until 2:35 when a repeated, magnetised “dream” leads towards off-kilter beats and basslines. As with its two predecessors, ‘You Instead’ was “recorded in the abandoned Ben Sherman factory - product design department. Mixing was interesting in a 3000 square foot room with no walls.” Perhaps the lack of physical limitations encouraged San Scout to push their sonic boundaries further. - HT