Escort were spawned when Eugene Cho and Dan Balis met at an electronic music class in Poughkeepsie, New York. They began making house singles, gradually adding musicians and evolving into a 15-piece orchestral behemoth. Animal Nature, Escort’s second album, has all the trappings of dance classics of the last 30-odd years: If You Say So has a repetitive rhythm, lyrics about “letting go” and a squelchy bassline worthy of Daft Punk; Cabaret has a Giorgio Moroder-esque pulsating synth, Earth, Wind & Fire horn flourishes and an Italian house-style piano. And just when you’re thinking, “But wait! Where’s the Chic-style guitar?”, a funky riff straight out of the Nile Rogers playbook locks Barbarians into a tight groove. Escort’s sense of abandon never quite reaches the heights of their disco forebears, but closing track Dancer, recorded before an audience in Brooklyn, reveals them to be a formidable live prospect.
