Escort is the brainchild of Eugene Cho and Dan Balis, who met in an electronic music class at Vassar College and began making house singles. Starting out, the duo called on the favors of friends and fellow musicians (who had played with the likes of Arcade Fire), bringing players in one at a time and layering tracks to achieve the full sound they knew so well from their box of disco 12-inches. They were introduced to model, singer and bass-player Adeline through a mutual friend, who had just moved from Paris to New York.  With cult nu-disco tracks like ‘Cocaine Blues’, the band’s heady, 15-strong live show has since toured all over America, Europe and seen them grow both in numbers and musical ambition. Escort’s second album. ‘Animal Nature’, stays true to the tradition of disco’s holy trinity – New York, Chicago and Detroit – while presenting a more eclectic snapshot of club-culture. Opener ‘Body Talk’ marries string-drenched sounds rooted in the 70s with the driving keys and sultry vocals of modern House, while the adrenaline-fuelled, pulsating bass of ‘Helium’ was written moments after a chaotic show in Portugal, and finished off with Babydaddy of Scissor Sisters. ‘If You Say So’, meanwhile, blends 80s AOR (Daryl Hall, Stevie Nicks) with sun-soaked contemporary Soul, starkly contrasting with the nocturnal catharsis of the title track: a song, says Cho, about “those moments where, for better or worse, we shut out all those voices and act upon our basic instincts.” Elsewhere, ‘Animal Nature’ digs deeper into the complexities of modern city life (and the need to escape it all on the dance-floor). The pounding, hip-hop drums of ‘Barbarians’ offers an imagined manifesto for revolutionaries, whilst the glorious ‘My Life’ is an ode to conviction and forging your own way. St. Vincent is reimagined on a bold, 180-degree cover of ‘Actor Out of Work’, another performing icon is in part paid tribute to on penultimate track ‘Cabaret’: written after sharing coffee cake (and salacious, back-in-the-day, party-stories) with Liza Minelli, ‘Cabaret’ is a Moroder-esque response to the NYC venues that forced to obtain a dancing license. And all hell breaks loose on closer ‘Dancer’, recorded live from a recent Brooklyn show and releasing the slow-burning grooves across Escort’s second album into full-on ‘Animal Nature’. In an age where music is over-saturated in faceless producers, endless beats and come-and-go remixes, Escort is big. Literally. By creating things the old-fashioned way - impeccable production, musicianship, and songwriting – they have claimed their status as a refreshing voice in modern Dance.