You know how when you’re a kid, everything is absolutes? Modern dance music is kinda still stuck there, flipping between the night-and-day of dour seriousness vs. punch-your-mom-in-the-face party ethic. It makes it hard to find music that does more than soundtrack individual emotions.

Somewhere between the Juan Maclean’s raucous four-on-the-floor formula and chamber vox techno of the likes of Imogen Heap or Bat for Lashes, there lies a fabled land called subtlety. Most the time, only Brian Eno lives there. But for goddamn once in our lives, a new guy, Vitalic, nee Pascal Arbez, hits it. More than hits it. Owns it.

Vitalic’s debut full-length OK Cowboy made waves back in 2005 with its woozy blend of smarter-than-average synths and weirder-than-average samples. But there was this one track, “The Past,” that came on like an Adderall-powered freight train loaded with paperback copies of Steppenwolf. (That’s a metaphor for being rad and subtle at the same time.) And it left you being all “Why can’t he make a whole record like that?”

Wish granted. Our boy Arbez is back and he’s got a danceable Enola Gay filled with subtlety bombs. Eponymous cut “Flashmob” feels like the bastard child of Justice and Lindstrom—detuned and headfucked, but not too far gone to exude shy thoughtfulness.

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