“Ready” isn’t Montreal producer Jacques Green’s first release in 2012. A 4-track 12″ by the name of Concealer was released in January to a great deal of fanfare. It was quite good. Its opener, “Flatline” is perhaps the most graceful marriage of current house-infused UK garage trends and true-(black-and-)blue R&B to date, while its all-or-nothing nine-minute closer “Arrow” varied between a devastating quiet similar to Burial’s “NYC” and a delicious 2-step free-for-all. Concealer wasn’t the most groundbreaking thing in the world, but it showed a great deal of promise and was a hell of a time to listen to.
At first glance, “Ready” might not look quite as ambitious or diverse as either of the aforementioned cuts, but it sees Greene sharpening his production chops on the figurative whetstone to a diamond edge. The track is six and half minutes, and Greene attacks all of them with the same sweat-soaked gusto he brings to his live sets without losing a thickly cushioned sense of atmosphere. A busy, weaving swath of chopped-wood percussion and house-y synths tangle in the foreground while some bruised, emotive vocals toil in a hazy wilderness at the track’s edges. “Ready” find’s its heavy, skull-rattle 4/4 center with a juke-y synth arpeggio around the three and a half minute mark, jumping from familiar staggering garage jounce to pummeling house in an instant. “Ready” isn’t rewriting any rules or anything, but you can bet it’ll devastate a crowd more handily than anything else in 2012 that calls Untrue an influence.
