Style: Instrumental hip hop, triphop, beats
Primary Emotions/Themes: Nightlife, noir, vintage soundscapes
Thoughts: Instrumental hip hop is something that I generally enjoy quite a bit. Especially when it's done with a darker take with the samples used. However, the genre can also be highly derivative leading to a quick pass from me. Night Child, as an album, is the tale of two sides. One side is dark, compelling, and filled with mystery. The other side is confused, repetitive, and largely uninteresting.
I really struggled with side B of this release. I basically forced myself to listen to it enough to be able to write a solid opinion on it. I don't like forcing myself to listen to music, I have too much already and it feels like a poor use of my time.
The music on the second side of the record tries too hard. It tries to be dark, but ends up falling flat. It tries to add in effects to make the music sound more obscure and mysterious. In the end those just disengage me from the music further. The beats seem lazily pasted onto music that was already struggling to hold my attention, resulting in music that I have a very difficult time listening to.
Side A on the other hand is completely different. This music actually succeeds in being interesting. The liberal use of string samples and clever use of noir detective sounds actually has the album succeeding in keeping the music engaging and holding my attention. It could easily
I can't stress enough how different these two sides are. Where one seems lost, the other is focused. Where one seems like it's copy/paste, the other has clever use of samples. Where one uses boring percussion, the other one uses dynamic beats befitting of the music. It's like I'm listening to two separate artists.
Even after editing this summary three to four times I'm still not happy with it. I don't think it conveys my thoughts completely, but I have to call it a day sometimes. The album is imperfect, but I do highly enjoy the better of the two sides. How long will it be before this one hits my turntable again? I'm not sure, but I do know that I'm not going to force myself to listen to something that I don't like from here on out. If I don't like it, I have hundreds of other records to put on instead that I do enjoy.
Written September 4th 2023
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