Meaphorical Music

Type: Album

Score: 8.5/10

After Modal Soul being so disappointing I was a little nervous to listen to another Nujabes album but after being pushed by a Youtube Short of all things I decided to give a shot and holy shit this album is so pretty. Aside from Highs 2 Lows which was a song so bad I could hardly believe it's made by the same guy as the rest of these, every song on this album is classic Nujabes with super unique jazzy beats and generally stellar performances from the featuring artists which felt a lot more inline with the Luv(sic) songs. I wasn't a huge fan of some of the watery, string pulling moments if you get me (you probably won't if you haven't listened to it) but even those aren't too bad, just a bit weird sounding and took some getting used to.

One of my favourite moments was when Nujabes was Next view with it's stellar instrumental and rapid breaks (unsure if that's the right word but it feels right). My favourite performance was probably Five Deez, great name by the way, on Latitude -remix, shit was just so smooth from their flow to the nearly flawless beat. I imagine the album would've been a little more digestible if some of the fat was cut off as an hour is reasonably long imho but even then there wasn't all that much fat to cut off, the majority felt pretty essential to the experience (though Peaceland had no need to be eight minutes, four would've been just fine). Shoutout to @AaronHampshire0 for the rec, he was onto something.