ARK - remains

Despite going hard for years, I think ARK’s dropped one of his most fulfilling and fully-formed projects to date this year. There’s something really intriguing about a tape that runs this smoothly (like seamless hard-cutting in a DJ set), but filled with beats that fluctuate in tone and emotion so much throughout its runtime. It’s like ARK took these various sonic remains and painted them back on the canvas however that piece made them feel. Whether it’s the sunbursting synths and playful hard-hitting drums on ‘bygone’ or the instantaneously bouncy ‘stumble’ which sounds like you’d stumbled in on a band midway through an insane jam, filled with samplers and drum machines. But there are moments of what I feel are real melancholy on this too, somehow fitting like a glove into the wider experience of the tape, like the sorrowful vocals and teardropped pianos of the final track, or ‘noway’ which feels like bittersweetly peering back at your old childhood VHS cassettes. The tape stays constantly engaging interweaving little quirks of character, inviting the listener into pure relaxation even when they’re frustrated at pairing up various pieces of incompatible hardware. Regardless of how much thought and intent went into the creation of it, ‘remains’ really strikes a chord in me because it feels so reminiscent of the childlike wonder I had when getting into instrumental hiphop years ago - the sunset-soaked chords of ΔKTR, ohbliv’s deep drums and hits of bass or the dizzying voxes panning left and right that Knxwledge used to do. Conjuring up a lot of those same feelings years later is a real treat, and I’ll be spinning back ‘remains’ many more times more because of it.

KEY BEAT: faceit - one of the more spritely moments, this is one of many beats here that exist somewhere between hi and lofi, snares snapping and kicks driving against such refreshing chops of piano, the bassline chugging the track along.