March 21st, 2024 7:16pm
Weighs Heavy On Me
Bolis Pupul “Kowloon”
“Kowloon” is in banger mode for most of its run time but as much as I enjoy the parts that go hard in a very Justice sort of way, the parts that really pull me in are the more mellow sections with ambient vocal chatter in the background. There’s a wonderful sense of atmosphere and space in those moments, like you’re immediately zapped to some unfamiliar street corner in, presumably, Kowloon City.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Yaya Bey “Crying Through My Teeth”
The equivalent of the indistinct chatter in “Kowloon” in “Crying Through My Teeth” is the droning organ part, which feels like frigid air gradually chilling everything else in the mix. The arrangement is very strong in general, mostly a lot of understated parts that sketch out a very specific mood and sense of physical space. Yaya Bey’s vocal tends towards the understated too, though there’s some excellent phrasing here, particularly in the second verse with the extended metaphor about telling jokes.
Buy it from Bandcamp.