Release Date: 29 September 2017
Song Count: 8
Rating: 2.9/10
Description:
One of the earliest works of artist and producer Sully, Escape is an album that, in spite of its short duration, manages to take its listeners on an absolutely wild ride with its sheer lack of a need to stick to one consistent style or sound at a time, instead bouncing all around the scapes of Drum & Bass and adjacent electronic music and coming up with some unruly combinations.
Escape, consisting of 8 tracks, has a very linear way of naming said tracks based on their style and role in the album - the ambient openings or in-between segways of track 1 and 6 are labeled "Thema", whilst two other tracks, 3 and 5, that both follow a relatively simply produced and robotic-sounding musical theme are called "Assembly". The other tracks go off on their own ways, and so get more distinguishing titles as a result.
While the latter two of the four remaining tracks fully lean into the DnB method of chopped and rushing sampling of the Amen Break atop samples that lay beyond original recognition, almost bordering on Breakcore-levels of extremities in terms of pace of production, the first two tracks mash their beats up with some peculiar rapping styles common in Sully's home country, which just so happen to also be amongst my least favourites out there, as such making them particularly difficult to sit through. This chaotically varied range of tracks, though making it extremely easy to pick out which songs are most qualitative, furthermore fail to connect together within each other at all, which ends up with the entire album feeling extremely disjointed and confused over what it wants to be.
It may not be quite fair to be this harsh towards an album that is very noticeably an exemplary experiment primarily meant to help the musician behind it all truly hone in on their crafts, but since transparency in opinions is one of the main aims of reviewing albums like these on a site, rating Escape accordingly and honestly is the best thing I can do here. Though Sully seems like a capable music producer in the making, to truly witness the full extent of his potential talents and ideas, perhaps looking at his other and more recent works would be a better option than listening to this specific album.