Album Review: XXYYXX - XXYYXX

XXYYXX
XXYYXX
Rating: Grrrr

16-year old wunderkind producer Marcel Everett, who goes under the moniker XXYYXX, is in that sort of undefinable stage where his musical output is frequently all over the map, trying a little Dirty South, two step, garage, dubstep, chillwave, and glo-fi before swirling around and starting all over again from the beginning. He is young enough to where this comes across as youthful experimentation and not a case of ADD. On his second full length, the self-titled XXYYXX, he is still searching for his own distinct style, often wearing his influences a little too brashly on his sleeve, but despite some musical similarities, his producer chops are too instinctive to dismiss the music as outright aping. I suppose if you want to get general about his sound, this music could be called future garage. Using mostly hip-hop inspired beats under atmospheric synths and rumbling bass, XXYYXX focuses on a slowed down aesthetic with vocal samples stretched and pitch shifted into almost unrecognizable forms.

First track "About You" points towards his strength as a producer and the first step in his own "sound." Glacial 808 beats meander as vocal samples are stretched across like saltwater taffy. Analog synths add a bed of warmth to the icy sound. There is a hint of James Blake's post-dubstep sounds here, but it is a starting off point only and not a focus.



And it's these tracks where you get a feeling of his influences but nothing overt where the album is sublime. On "Good Enough" a standard two-step beat is just the launchpad for a left field sample of "Scrubs" that slams the track into a forward thrust of Dirty South beats.



"Alone" has a subterranean feel to it, spartan beats under a muddy, murky screwed vocal sample, sounding like a body struggling up through mud.



Haunting vocals punctuate the lilt of acoustic guitars and skittering beats on "Closer."



And the gorgeous closing track "TIED2U" with the sample "everything's a memory/with stings that tie to you/in my dreams" that gets more and more cut and broken up as the song goes on, creating a highly emotional end to the record.



These tracks are the ones that really stand out and say something personal about Everett as a producer. This doesn't mean the other tracks are vastly inferior by any means, just that they seem more like the work of someone in love with certain sounds of different artists and trying to emulate them in some form. His debt to Clams Casino is very evident on the dreamy "Never Leave," skittering "Witching Hour" and the ghostly strains of "DMT."



And as previously noted, links to James Blake are inevitable; from the buzzy synths and intricate drum programming of "Breeze,"



to the clipped and fractured "Set It Off" with its rumbling sense of menace underneath the surface.



I don't want to harp on his age, because good music is good regardless of age, but he is still young and developing his own sound and is showing remarkable progress in reaching that stage. XXYYXX is an album that subtly gets under your skin and is a good entry point in the career of a rising young producer with a lot of talent.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and piques one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.