Canvas (Paper Skies)

Paper Skies moves towards a more riddim-oriented style whilst sticking rigidly to his colour bass origins, in what is essentially the little brother of his "Wireframe" LP last year.

The good: I've always liked Paper Skies' style of colour bass, and, for the most part, "Canvas" is no different. You can very clearly see where his older influences come through, and where his style begins to mutate and shift into something new (almost like a canvas, mixing old with new on a blank sheet), with all the stylistics balancing out very well. Oh, and, cohesively, "Canvas" is surprisingly strong, too, considering its smooth transitioning and sampling motifs.

The bad: This EP is just generally way too aggressive and loud for me, both sonically and also in pushing its riddim aesthetic. Future riddim can be a genre that's great if done well, but they don't feel like they properly mesh here, leaving me with a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Every track has something pretty great about it, but perhaps about half of them are brought down significantly by a disingenuous, overly abrasive riddim section.