As far as trip-hop production talent goes, you’d be hard pressed to find an artist more innovative and exciting than Pop Wallace right now. The Irish artist, currently based in Phoenix Arizona, caused major waves right after his debut single “Link Up”. The hype was enough to warrant a successful for an entire crowdfund for his first LP “Good Boy”. Putting together a slew of influences that range from Massive Attack to Frank Ocean, Pop Wallace has his finger on the pulse of the cultural zeitgeist in music right now. He’s fresh, cool, and ready to break boundaries.
‘Noises Made Figuring Things Out’ is an instrumental project to remember. Loaded with a slew of ambient sounds that come from a myriad of different genre’s, it’s wonderfully eclectic. A track like ‘Waltz with Whoever’, which begins and lulls you into a sense that it’s a classic jazz song immediately swerves into elements of futuristic and metallic oddities before transitioning to the next track. ‘Serial Experimentation’ is a dream pop themed track that utilises a wonderful acoustic section alongside subtle vocal sampling to create the ideal down tempo piece of ambient pop music. The vibe takes a much more fast paced turn on ‘S.D.S’, where the record takes a much more upbeat, almost frenetic feeling. The album hits a mellow and satisfying conclusion on ‘Cold Summer’, a pure down tempo and languid piece of sedative hip-hop.
“This song is essentially my attempt at a sad hip hop beat. Made during the monsoon season that occurred over the past month in Arizona, it had been hot but full of rain. The vibes on this are sad but beautiful and what I feel like embodied the idea of a cold summer. It was simple but effective I feel in closing out where I am and a nice finish to the tone of the project as a whole.”
If you enjoy ambient music, don’t skip out on this project by Pop Wallace. His ability to take a purely instrumental project and infuse it with six tracks that each reveal a wholly different style of ambient music is remarkable. Drum and bass, r&b, hip-hop, world music, rock, and a whole lot more. The album is a spread of genres, all reworked into Pop Wallace’s unique style.
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