Nichols+Roark Land on All Day I Dream's Summer's End Sampler

All Day I Dream closes its summer with a sampler, and ‘Melodica’ by Nichols+Roark is on it, out on 26 September. It’s the duo’s second appearance of the year.

The London duo built the track around chants, male and female, and let those vocals set the rhythm and steer the chords instead of writing the parts first and fitting the voices in afterwards. The idea underneath it is how masculine and feminine energies sit together, and what breath and movement do to it. It grew organically, and in this case that’s a description of the method and not a genre tag: the singing came first and the record followed it.

Early support came from Lee Burridge. The label founder gave the track its first spin at Burning Man this year, and it’s stayed in the duo’s own sets since: Gospel in NYC last weekend, ADE in October, Art Basel in Miami after that. It also turns up at SHIFT, the events series Nichols+Roark run themselves, which puts music and art in one room and treats the environment as part of the show. It isn’t a club night.

Play it outdoors and play it late, when a crowd’s been standing in one place long enough to hear voices as voices.