Music

2013: The year of Disclosure

I first heard Disclosure one Friday night during Annie Mac’s Radio 1 show well over a year ago. A catchy, old school garage-style beat caught my attention – what was this doing on a programme that showcases the best of new music?

Jessie Ware - Running (Disclosure Remix)

If you didn’t already know (have you been in hiding?), Disclosure is made up of two brothers, Guy and Howard Lawrence who are 22 and 19 respectively. Producing most of their music in an attic room above their Father’s antique store, the duo has managed to find that perfect gap between getting their music onto the mainstream while keeping themselves firmly in favour with the underground scene.

Disclosure really hit the big time with the release of ‘Latch’ with vocals provided by Sam Smith described by The Guardian as a deliriously brilliant track that sum up the immediate rush of falling head over heels in love with someone. Big words. Entering the charts at #11, Latch was the first big chart and radio success for the duo.

Latch for me personally sums up this summer perfectly, memories of the night we went to see Disclosure at a warehouse rave and my friend ended up snogging someone in a photobooth, and the happiest I think I’ve ever been dancing in the mud listening to a Stanton Warriors drop the Mafia Kiss remix of the song at Glastonbury. My boyfriend once said that a side effect of being around me was having Latch stuck in your head for days after.

Disclosure - Latch ft. Sam Smith

Since Latch, the hits have just tumbled over one another; White Noise featuring AlunaGeorge’s Aluna Francis nearly hit the top spot reaching #2, then You & Me hit our speakers featuring Eliza Doolittle and since there has been You & Me and Help Me Lose My Mind – all from Mercury-prize nominated album Settle, which went straight to #1 in the UK charts and received huge praise from across the industry.

The boys even managed to come out on top after being caught with their mixers unplugged at Capital FM’s Summertime Ball unplugged. Guy was quoted as saying: “Capital FM made us do this show with a backing track playing,” he began. “We pleaded with them for weeks and weeks to let us play fully live or at least let us mix but they just weren’t having it … It was incredibly frustrating and horrible for us to hear our music at Wembley and not actually be able to play it ourselves.”

After a summer packed full of festival appearances (I saw them 3 times alone at Glastonbury), the brothers are in the middle of a three-day sold out stint at Brixton Academy but not fear as they will be back next March for a further tour across the country. Good thing they’re young, because they need all the energy they can to keep this going. It’s been an undeniably incredible year for Disclosure in 2013, I can’t wait to see what is going to happen for them in 2014.