Tracey’s club hit “Sex Life” is just the beginning

Tracey get the liveliest when they talk about hearing their breakout song “Sex Life” played by club DJs. One half of the anonymous London-based duo (hereby referred to as Tracey 1) recalls the thrill of hearing it played by a friend just after it had been mastered; the other member (or Tracey 2) pipes up for the first time in our call to say he’d just heard it in Tokyo between two Vybz Kartel tracks. The two then sidebar, recalling in a bewildered yet grateful tone hearing an EDM edit of the track played at a massive Las Vegas festival. “It’s so nice to see people running with it,” Tracey 1 says behind the disabled camera of our video call. “It’s got a bit of a life of its own.”

Press play on “Sex Life” and you’ll instantly hear why it’s become a moment. It starts with the menacing thrum of classic dubstep and a voice: “All I wanna do is fuck,” announces a jammed-up voice pieced together from different sentences. The timbre drains any sense of desire from the ensuing lyrical detail — discretion and danger are preferred in every rendez-vous, the voice insists — leaving the song as sleek and unyielding as an assembly line of stainless steel dildos. But then a verse from grime M.C. Riko Dan pumps blood through the carnal pleasures, sending the song to a Jersey Club-inspired finish.

“It’s funny,” says Tracey 1 of the song, “because it was meant to be quite somber, about compulsivity to one’s libido. And then we were like, ‘Let’s get an MC’ and Riko Dan absolutely killed it. But we hadn’t briefed him on any of these themes, so then it just became what it is.”

“Sex Life” might eventually be the world’s introduction to Tracey – it’s already gotten plenty of airtime on U.K. radio stations like BBC 6Music and 1Xtra – but it’s far from the full picture. The four-track Tracey EP, released May 16 via London’s venerable AD 93, is one of the most exciting electronic releases of the year so far, full of both curiosity to try new things and mastery of every sound it brings into its passionate bricolage.

The dry lewdness of “Sex Life” is actually an outlier on Tracey; its other three songs dive deeper into more abstract dimensions of human connection. A passionate and soulful unnamed lead vocalist – think a classically trained Tirzah – guides a pivot-filled journey: “Sweet” has tractor-beam synths and jazzy flourishes, and ends up like a glitchier version of a song from Leila’s 1998 experimental trip-hop opus Like Weather. The orchestral, techno-tinged ambience of “When I Choose to Be Here with You” is marble-colored Andy Stott ambience, and concluding track “Take Care” deconstructs Britpop’s most cathartic tendencies into something far from a mere throwback.

It’s all deliriously cool, but more importantly, sincere. “We really love people, and connecting with them through our music,” Tracey 1 says. “And we really want to be a positive energy in that way.”

Given their desire to remain anonymous (for now), it’s tough to get many concrete details about the Traceys. But they are willing to share that they met as students and have been friends for a decade. “Lots of our friends are musicians,” Tracey 1 says, “but at that time, we weren’t the ones doing the music.” They tried to make music together periodically, but it was only over the last few years that the outline of Tracey began to take shape.

“It’s quite nice to feel like we’re doing our own thing,” Tracey 1 admits. “And absolutely no shade to anyone else, but we don’t necessarily feel like we’re in a scene.”

Tracey’s anonymity isn’t a gimmick, some moldy carrot dangled in a flimsy attempt to gin up interest. Intuition is a key factor of how they make music, and keeping their identities a secret helps them block out the noise. “It takes a bit of pressure off of us,” Tracey 1 says. “We don’t have to think about ourselves, which we certainly weren’t doing when we made this music.

“Even just off of this release and people obviously enjoying it, it starts to get a little bit cerebral. You start to think, ‘oh God, we’ve got another Sex Life. What do people think of us?’ How are they going to receive our next bit of work?’ That is just such a trap.”

The band also cherish their insularity. Though the Tracey EP involved a handful of guest musicians, a creative design team, and songs stockpiled over the years, the duo’s entrance into the music industry was not seamless. “There was a lot of back and forth,” Tracey 1 recalls. “The whole process went on for like a couple of years. Being exposed to these external factors felt a bit jarring.”

In this context, the band’s intentional obscurity feels essential to its similarly undefinable sound. I suggest to the band that such concealing could become an essential creative tool for artists in the age of massive data collection, streaming analytics, and overzealous fans. They politely entertain the idea, but insist that for them, it’s not that deep. “We just did it because it was fun. And we really want to hold on to that mentality of not overthinking things.”

Tracey 1 hopes the duo will release their debut album soon. But whatever the future holds, he wants its recording sessions to retain the same spirit that created “When I Choose To Be Here With You.” That song was made on holiday in an apartment at the spur of the moment with a Bluetooth speaker and nothing to lose.

“I think a lot of people who make and perform music forget that doing it is fun. It makes you feel good. And the more fun they’re gonna have, the better the work.”