Feature Photo from Disclosure Official Facebook
The iconic English electronic music duo, Disclosure, will be taking the stage in the big apple this upcoming Saturday 5/18/19. They announced their US tour back in March 2019 and Brooklyn was the first date to sell out. This US tour consists of only 9 shows, but they are all at extremely iconic festivals and venues with huge capacities. They kicked off their tour at Lightening in a Bottle last Sunday May 12th and will end it at Red Rocks Amphitheater on on May 27th. Along the road they will be performing at Ravine in Atlanta, Club Space in Miami, Echostage in DC, BangOn!’s Elements Lakewood Festival in PA, Movement Festival in Detroit, and Encore Beach Club in Vegas. This Saturday in NYC, they will be headlining at the one and only Brooklyn Mirage with the support of Carl Craig, SJ Seinfeld, and Jay Daniel. This show will be my first time seeing Disclosure live and I’ve had so many of their fans tell me I should get ready for a magical evening.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, Disclosure is an electronic duo consisting of two brothers, Howard and Guy Lawrence. They grew up in England with professional musicians as parents. Their father is a professional auctioneer and their mother is a successful session musician. The brothers were around music from the start of their existence and picked up their first instruments whilst under the age of puberty. They continued on their destined path of becoming extremely talented musicians by furthering their education and training in college where they studied music and music technology. Today, Howard plays the bass, guitar, piano, and sings while Guy plays the drums, guitar, and piano. Howard always was into funk and soul whereas Guy liked hip-hop and dubstep. Together, they create an absolutely unique mellow house sound with garage and synth pop elements.
Not at all surprisingly, Disclosure came out of the gates running when they started to release music together. Way back in 2010 they were releasing music on Myspace and they quickly gained attention from Method Management. With the help of collaborations with other artists on the Method Management roster they released their first UK hit single ‘Latch’ Ft. Sam Smith in 2012. Over the next three years Disclosure went on to collaborate with the likes of Eliza Doolittle, Jessie Ware, AlunaGeorge, Miguel, Gregory Porter, The Weekend, Lorde, Khalid, and more! They received stand out press from the likes of Pithfork, Billboard, and many more whilst receiving nominations for multiple different awards (Grammy, Brit, NME, and World Music). To take things even further, their album, Caracal, won Best Full Length Studio Recording at the International Dance Music Awards in 2016! As they reached their peak, they took a step back. From 2016 – 2018 they announced a two year hiatus. I can only imagine the whirlwind that they must have felt while still growing up and finding themselves as people and musicians.
The brothers are human, like everyone else. Their fans truly respected this hiatus and although Disclosure was missed, this was a really great move on their part. Many artists get lost in the stardom. The best thing about Disclosure’s success is that the brothers are extremely modest about their ability to create such a unique and marketable sound. In interviews they mention that each release they put out is better than the next because they are still learning new things every day. They say that their success is unintentional, they don’t have any master plan, they’re just making the music that they want to make and learning new things every day.
In may of 2018 they began releasing music again and this year they released their most recent single ‘Talk’ featuring Khalid which is already on track to be their most successful track of all time, reaching platinum status in less than three months. A few months ago they released a VIP remix to the song, yes that’s right, they remixed their own song. This isn’t the first time they’ve done something like this and each time I see it I am more and more impressed. Only the most influential of artists can do something as bold as that after going away for two years just to come back better than ever before. Only one year back into the game and Disclosure is back, a force to be reckoned with – they haven’t reached their peak yet!