Quintino – Lowrider

• The drop… It’s missing something
• Annoying vocals in both break and drop
• Still deserves praise for leaving comfort zone.

Perhaps it has become easier to bash the occasional Quintino‘s vapid releases, but hey, it’s much fun! We love and respect the Dutch creator, who is the mastermind behind several of our favorite EDM releases (“Go Hard“, “Epic“, and the more recent “Melody“, which received a positive review from us), although sometimes he has an unexplainable downturn in quality. Let’s not forget flops such as “Quechua” or “Get You Home“!

Not everything has to be released, you know… This is just our pure, unprofessional opinion.

Anyways, “Lowrider” particularly impressed me for its flatness. The drop is a thumping kick à la “Epic” and a repetitive Dutch House vocal syllable (I refuse to call it a loop). With some bass-boosted speaker systems, it would be a killer, but when it dropped on my usual headphones, there were no highs! Initially believing that my headphones were misbehaving, it turns out that the track is missing its main drop synths! And there’s a damn good lead in the long build-up; generic as hell, sure, but there was the perfect candidate, Quintino! Unfortunately, it got allocated in the wrong place instead.

My biggest grievance is with the “vocals”, I guess. In the breakdown, we have a robotic vocoder that sounds out of place, annoying me out. Then the “syllable” starts to play, completely alone, and by that point, I pressed to quit. The high-pitched vocals are almost a nuisance, and imagine when they are the only performer in the pre-drop! One of the strangest choices I have heard this year.

So, if minimalism’s your cup of tea, there’s much entertainment bundled in “Lowrider”. For the rest of us, this SupersoniQ release is too sparse with a bland vocal loop to become interesting enough.

We still admire Quintino’s desire for bolder choice-making with his sounds, which seem genuine. Unfortunately, a risky strategy like that comes equipped with a chance of creating unpleasant results.

You can listen to “Lowrider” here:

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