First Impressions - Ka & Preservation's Days With Dr. Yen Lo
This shit is spiritual brehs. I thought The Nights Gambit was good but it was kind of drowning in itself, if that makes sense. I might just be talking about the production but this is kind of punctual, super atmospheric and unpredictable in a sense. You can feel the tension in the beats, and despite Ka not really bringing much variety in his delivery (one of my few complaints, I really don't think it would
hurt if he was a bit more varied even within the mood he's trying to go for), the production kind of beckons for you to anticipate his next line, resulting in some really interesting songwriting IMO. Constantly giving you a nostalgic 80s/90s cop show vibe (someone else used this analogy here and they were 100% on point), taking you through all the different emotions you might feel in a show from the lulls to the chase all within a single song.
It kind of accomplishes something that turns me off to a lot of good projects, which is constantly surprising me on where the album goes next. Seems like there is a lot of stuff used sparingly, consistently, which really helps with cohesion IMO. Stuff like the sampled conversations, background/doubled vocals, longer breaks between vocals etc. The lyrics are also in all the right ways, concentrated efforts at creating imagery and inserting punchlines to keep you in the mix and break up the monotony as much as they can. I've yet to kind of piece the story together but each song is vivid enough for me to
want to dig deeper, and I think that separates it from other dense projects in recent memory.
Listened to this with my full attention while painting. Standouts are probably Day 3, Day 1125, Day 13 & Day 22.. Probably my frontrunner for AotY, and it sets quite a precedent.
tl;dr: