Release Date: 31 October 2025
Song Count: 14
Rating: 6.8/10
Description:
Today's album is quite the out-there piece composed by an American YouTube personality by the name of AZALI, creating content and music for a wide audience to witness for a few years now. An absolute genre-shattering collection of 14 tracks, Voices From the True World VIII meshes some of the most fundamentally different worlds of music - classical instruments and electronic production - and puts them together into one particular type of sound that, while an acquired taste for many, leads to some extremely creative showings in the songs.
The first half of this instrumental album is the prime stage for this mixture, as piano melodies as well as occassional saxophones and choirs are mixed on top of quick electronic drums, keys and slick digital production topping everything together. Some of the directions the tracks go in may be reminiscent of soundtracks from video games, which could very well have been a legitimate source of inspiration by the creator given some of the song titles and structures. A peak is reached here with the track "ECHO INTERIM", a track that reaches breakcore levels of speed of percussion chops and simultaneously manages to implement several analog instruments that one may not expect on this particular kind of mixing, creating a very interesting dynamic that works in mysteriously functional synergy and leading to a very fun listen.
The latter half, in contrast, leans fully into the "classical" aspect of the music, consisting of a set of short tracks with different emotions and moods attached to them that utilise a small but sufficient amount of instruments and sounds to achieve its desired effects. The composition further uses different noticeable tools within music theory to reach further than just an ordinary set of melodies on a piano, such as overarching themes and leitmotive, particularly between the tracks "stargazing" and "cloudgazing" directly referencing and reflecting off of each other.
A quite experimental project that makes an attempt at keeping itself steady amongst its feet in spite of taking on the daunting task of trying to make two genres that could not be more different from each other work together as one, and does so to varying degrees of success. AZALI seems like an artist full of ideas and willingness to think outside of the box when it comes to the art of creating music, and there may just be a future worth looking into with their endeavours.