Song You Need: dreamcastmoe’s “El Dorado” is a dubby ballad dedicated to the grind

The FADER’s “Songs You Need” are the tracks we can’t stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.

dreamcastmoe chose an apt title for his new EP Sound Is Like Water. Across the five tracks, the Washington DJ and producer takes that Bruce Lee quote to heart and adopts many modes: he becomes Sampha's erstwhile scion on "Complicated" before switching to diaristic bedroom rapper on "RU Ready," followed by an outsider R&B iconoclast on "Novacaine." These go down relatively smoothly after the project opener "El Dorado" where the Washington-based artist fully lets his hair down and revels in the compelling strangeness he's capable of.

A rumination on the pains and pleasures of the grind, "El Dorado" clatters both literally and structurally with the same dubby haze from which Dean Blunt and Mica Levi regularly emerge. The sparseness of the instrumentation – reverbed percussion over a simple, punchy 8-bar drum loop and a few snatches of synthesized strings – gives dreamcastmoe the space to give us a peek into the lonely, lusty, and resolute thoughts that bounce around his brain, lush and soaked in golden melodies. Whatever form dreamcastmoe takes, he knows how to keep us listening.