We all love free music, but isn’t it great when that music is brilliant enough to make you want to spend your bitterly-earned cash money on it? Scottish producer and DJ DFRNT‘s Cut Records started out this time last year with the admirable objective of releasing high quality music without insisting on pecuniary compensation. Even more impressive is the fact that it’s a one-man label, with DFRNT handling everything but the music himself. Rain Dog’s “See Hear” EP is one which proves that Cut is that rare entity: a netlabel that lives up to its own hype.

The first track on the EP is one of those sample-based tunes that begins with a soothing voice saying something vaguely spiritual, as if to make sure you know you’re about to hear some seriously meditative grooves. But we’ll allow Rain Dog one little electronica cliché, because the music on the See Hear EP is lush enough to excuse any hippie tendencies – and yeah, it’s worth dusting off the word ‘lush’. “Beyond Their Years” lets its bassline sit unobtrusively on a sandy musical shore, while beautiful piano melodies wash in and out like the – you get the picture, don’t you? This is an EP you can do yoga to. You practice yoga while listening to electronic music, don’t you? Everyone’s doing it.

Don’t get too tantric, though: “One to Love” scales back on the spiritual purification vibes to allow for some indecent percussion to play with the shimmering string and vocal samples, and the eponymous EP closer is decidedly a head-nodder, bringing a staccato hip hop synthline into liason with phantasmal piano samples to prove that beats you can dance to are only ever one drum beat and a couple of clicks away.

“Dry” is the track that really energizes this EP, however, taking the enjoyably tacky basslines of mid-90s trip-hop and bringing them into the twenty-first century with a few well placed snares and melodies that each vie for your attention. Unlike the dross systematically bruising your eardrums on Soundcloud, or the half-baked twitter treats that get tossed out for utterly transparent promo purposes, “See Hear” is beautifully arranged and well-worth listening to. And even paying for.

CUT006 Rain Dog – See Hear EP (preview) by cutmusic

“See Hear” is a name-your-price release out now on Cut Records.