Two years ago former Chicagoan Bill Salas, aka DJ-producer Brenmar, told Miles Raymer, “I just wanted to go into the club and have people dance.” That wasn’t always Salas’s prerogative—he cut his teeth in the local noise and punk scenes, and in 2007 he moved to Brooklyn to join wild art-rock outfit These Are Powers. But Salas gravitated toward kaleidoscopic, hard-to-categorize dance music, and today he releases his debut EP for Fool’s Gold, Award.
Award is the stuff that fills dance floors and appeals to the broadest definition of EDM. The EP has less to do with colossal, mind-numbing bass drops and more to do with drawing from a pool of genres spread out across pop’s spectrum. On the title track Salas uses a solemn piano note as a guiding light—it rings constantly throughout the song’s shape-shifting landscape of shivering video game synths, cool finger snaps, and what sounds like a sample of glass shattering.
Salas swings back through Chicago tomorrow night for an Award release party at Primary Nightclub; Them Flavors DJs open.