Local Review: Young Feel – Night Waves

Young Feel
Night Waves

Self-Released
Street: 07.29.15
Young Feel = Yung Gud + Curtis Heron + Burial

Local producer Young Feel is a talented musician who has mastered the creation of stylized and cloudy trap beats. His EP, entitled Night Waves, is a strong showcase of his work and style. Night Waves sports seven medium-length tracks that each use similar effects and instrumentation. Most tracks on the EP employ strong reverberations and eerie samples, giving each instrumentation a darker, dreamy-sounding vibe. The title, Night Waves, fits the style of the album perfectly, and Young Feel does a good job of creating a laid-back vibe throughout.

Most tracks on the EP sound similar to what many underground rap producers are creating today. Young Feel builds a landscape with his instrumentations and shies away from banging bass and rasping hi-hats. His sound is similar to up-and-coming producers in Team Sesh, such as Kid Hnrk and Drip 133, who also tend to stay away from harder-sounding drum kits. Still, Young Feel is able to find his own distinct minimal sound on Night Waves. The last track, “Morning Road,” is particularly strong, borrowing styles from old-school dance music and even vaporwave.

Night Waves, as a whole, is well-mixed and better engineered compared to some of Young Feel’s earlier instrumentals. The higher-octave samples in songs like “Blonde” and “Pink Water” are original sounding and entrancing, though the bass is sometimes lost as a result. Still, each track is catchy and enjoyable. Young Feel does a fantastic job at modernizing retro-sounding samples, borrowing from vastly different styles of music and molding it to fit modern-day hip-hop. It will be interesting to see what Young Feel will do with his next work and what his beats would sound like if rapped over. This local producer definitely has promise, and Night Waves is a strong example of where producers are headed these days and what a quality beat should sound like.
–Taylor Hartman