Ministry of Sound Recordings · 13 January 2021
CamelPhat and Green Velvet team up for the first time on Critical
Curtis Alan Jones, the man behind Relief Records, lends his vocal to a British duo he's never worked with before.
CamelPhat, the British duo who closed out 2020 with the acclaimed album Dark Matter, open 2021 alongside Green Velvet, the recording name of American house veteran Curtis Alan Jones, on a new single called Critical.
It’s the first time the pair have combined on a record. It’s out via Ministry of Sound Recordings on 8 January.
Jones is the one who founded Relief Records, and the years still haven’t slowed the chameleonic streak that keeps pulling him into new shapes, new sounds, new versions of himself, whatever the moment happens to call for. That reputation is what he brings into a first-time pairing with a British duo who spent the back half of last year building a reputation of their own.
A first-time pairing doesn’t automatically add up to more than the sum of its parts. On paper, though, house lineage meeting festival-scale production is a pairing that makes sense before a note gets played. Not that anyone doubted it.
The single leans tech house, built around synths, a warped bassline and percussion tight enough to hold together a peak-time set. Jones’s own vocal runs through the top of it.
