Son Of Philip, Keydell - I Find Myself In You
As the year ends, I wanted to bring attention to Bliss Print's latest release, I Find Myself In You (2023). This is the newest EP from the duo Son of Philip and Keydell. Earlier this year, I wrote about the exceptional single Rain (2023), including a fantastic Keydell remix. Now, the duo is back with a bang.
Their latest work, I Find Myself In You, is a modern, futuristic take on the heavy sounds of grime and ambient. Son of Philip and Keydell have been creating what I would call "City Ambience"; it heavily reflects city living by incorporating UK mainstays like rain and traffic and captures the culture and soul of inner-city living. The album introduces themes of maturity, relationships, and inner-city living using vocals and digitised sounds.
The track 'Tribute', released as a single earlier in the year, is a fun yet thoughtful dance track highlighting the use of vocals and digitised sounds to come. The song is filled with rattling percussion that slides from beat to beat, counteracted by the pulsating base that wamps away under a 2-step kick and snare pattern. 'Tribute' introduces carefully spliced vocals that come together into really effective hooks.
'I Find Myself In You' injects some character into the vocal samples and explores the grimy inspirations heard throughout. While it is the darkest sonically, the duo balances that darkness with high-pitched digital noise, snapshots of friendly conversation and robust reverbs that blow over the track like a wall of emotion. 'Memory Loss', which uses heavy breathing and vulnerable-sounding vocals, indicates personal struggle. Digital artefacts of the vocal glitch blend with fragmented drones twinkling with the warmth of nervous energy. At the climax, a laugh triggers an explosion of vibrating texture, showing a newfound confidence and the record floods with jubilation. 'Park Plaza' rounds out the quartet of city stories, which switches gears almost instantaneously, bringing a beat filled with mechanical percussion and quite aggressive synth sounds only to be filtered out, leaving a delicate, childlike toy piano. 'Park Plaza' shows how volatile the city can be but how much warmth there is within it. It feels like an appreciation of multicultural living with people of like minds being so close.
Overall, every track on the EP is exceptionally well crafted, with little nuggets of rhythmic elation for those who are patient enough to delve in. The synthesis on display is sublime, creating vivid pictures in sound. Narratively and sonically, I Find Myself In You puts progression at the forefront. The creativity on display continues the evolution of each idea to the natural end, which is fantastic.
Tracklist:
Memory Loss
I Find Myself In You
Tribute
Park Plaza
Label: Bliss Print (2023)
Son Of Philip, Keydell - I Find Myself In You