​Forget Jamie xx, Ambassadeurs is the UK's Indie Dance Champion

Having been considered a prospect on the up for more than a couple of years thanks to a slew of electronically-wrought EPs that lean wonkily towards beat music and bass, Brighton-based Ambassadeurs' debut LP, Patterns, released this week, finds Mark Dobson successfully taking on pop song structure and revealing a whole new side to his creativity.

"I learnt music by playing the guitar, bass, piano, writing for bands," Dobson explained on the eve of the album's release. "I've always been comfortable in the mentality of writing songs."

Many of the Pattern's leading tracks sit well in comparison to the major indie dance acts from whom they seem inspired. Jamie xx wishes he had written "Forever," and "From You" is a sorority house panty dropper, the likes of which ODESZA would spill their Starbucks over.

It's on tracks like "My Way," though, where Dobson's ineffable penchant for rangy experimentalism shines through. Probably the most upfront tune on the record, the beat cycles through odd time signatures, an almost forbidden terrain in dance music, and it works. Really well.

"It alternates every three bars between different signatures," Dobson says of the track. "I wasn't sure if it was gonna work live, but playing it in DJ sets has worked! It's wicked."

Ambassadeurs' live setup splits the duties of realtime production and DJ sets. "I've got full control of the bits of a track, but I trigger and put things together even though it seems like a DJ set," he explains. "When you've got loads of things going on, you can do more by composing the overall structure of it rather than just playing along with a part."

Dobson debuted many of the tunes on Pattern to stateside audiences most recently at Lightning in a Bottle in California. "It was amazing!" he laughs. "I had some really interesting conversations with lots of crazy people talking about spiritualism, talking about astral planes and taking DMT. We have the same sort of thing at English festivals, but it's usually a lot smaller. To go to a big festival like that was awesome."

In celebration of the album's release, Ambassadeurs has put together an 80-minute selection of tracks from smartdance contemporaries. He goes minimal and heady on this one, dropping everything from Martyn and Four Tet to The Field and DJ Koze.

"I've been moving towards more stripped back stuff," he says. "I always wanna throw so many ideas at a track, but I'm feeling like making something that you can vibe to instead of doing something that takes a lot of effort to listen to. This mix is a representation of that. I dunno if I'm gonna go that minimal, though."

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Tracklist:
Ambassadeurs - Looking At You Feat. C Duncan
Round - Glass
Axel Boman - Hello
Leon Vynehall - Time
DJ Koze - Ich schreib' dir ein Buch 2013 (feat. Hildegard Knef)
Soulphiction - When Radio Was Boss
Martyn & Four Tet - Glassbeadgames
Ambassadeurs - Crimson
Ambassadeurs - Forever
The Field - Cupids Head
The Cumeo Project - Signal Waves
Kolsch - Bappedekkel
Four Tet - Jupiters
Sorrow - Chronicle
Rival Consoles - Recovery