Credit: Sotto Voce
Felt Sick
[By: Feed Me]
Genre: Electro house
Rating: 60
Cohesiveness: 53
Track quality: 69
Beginner-friendly? pretty much yes
Written 2025/12/07
Many artists try to impress with every album. They try to revolutionise, they try to innovate. But Feed Me's second album of 2025 is not a statement of artistic upheaval, no, it's a statement of consistency - perhaps to its detriment.
"Felt Sick" maintains that familiar, infectious groove of his previous electro house works, kept on the down-low through forty-five minutes of atmospheric revving. Positing a largely instrumental tracklist, this is an album that carries itself on vibe and vibe alone - indeed, "Felt Sick" doesn't feel the need to play out a narrative, or even anchor itself by vocals.
But the vibes of "Felt Sick" are, to put it crudely, immaculate. Feed Me imbues this record with a gleaming sense of youthful eagerness, innocent and joyous, beaming a great big smile as it bounds from melody to melody. It's the bottled happiness contained in tracks like "Innie" or "Let Monica Go" that shape the satisfaction this record delivers, but Feed Me punctuates it with the bassy growl of adult life. The bar fight atmosphere of "Mug" and the stabby "Too Easy" represent just two potential switches the album executes, facing off the childish innocence of "Felt Sick" with a sucker punch from roaring basslines. It would not be wrong to say, then, that "Felt Sick" prepares to spill out across the entire emotional spectrum of life, but it certainly does so in quite a reserved manner. Even the heavier tracks are not maximalist, necessarily, perhaps with the exception of "Local Wildlife", but rather they are simply angrier or darker.
Here, though, the lack of cohesion begins to take its toll on "Felt Sick". It is generally a very difficult task for an album to rely entirely on abstract emotion, without grounding it in powerful chords or compelling vocals, and it is even more difficult for it to forgo a cohesive mood. Feed Me treads a thin line, and he quickly falls off it, and as a result "Felt Sick" feels unfortunately disjointed. It builds the walls between its emotions thinly, and the tone of the album diffuses through them far too quickly to anchor itself onto any given intention. At this point the lack of anchorage feels less like a liberation and more like a handwavey 'gimmick' - if it can even be called such - and without anchorage, the tracks begin to float off into their independent bubbles. Paradoxically, though, by the nature of Feed Me's electro house style, they simply don't stand solidly on their own; "Felt Sick" requires a codepenence between tracks that its tonality cannot afford. At a glance, this is a very strong album, but run through it with a fine comb and what was once a very appealing tracklist composition slowly begins to fall apart.
Truth to be told, there is very little that is actually wrong with "Felt Sick" - from a technical standpoint, the sound design and production standard it lives by are generally quite high-level. And Feed Me's an experienced enough player to understand the intricacies of building a persona, building an album, and building a track, brick by brick. But we all have our off days, and I suppose it's particularly fitting for "Felt Sick" to be called as such, because its evocative songs feels true to the title - until it begins to feel disjointed, that is.
Listen on Spotify here.
Spectral Feel [Melodic] | (/100)
Feed Me kicks off this album with an amazingly clean electro house, contained in some of his distinct sound design but interesting enough - with the prominent synth lead and the lapping drums, alongside the deceptively complex mixdowns - to feel very well-made. The quasi-switchup at the end helps its dynamicism, too.
Pyro [Standout] | (/100)
w/ EMSKI
EMSKI's vocal is particularly strong. Her simplistic, unadorned verses help to construct the track's foundation, and she rides the basslines of the drops with a deeper performance. It's Feed Me, though, who provides the real punch of "Pyro" with his rhythmic, growling production.
Innie [Melodic] | (/100)
"Innie" starts off amazingly strong, with a liquidy mixdown and a fun little lead. The whole track has a sort of youthful vigour to it, one that blooms and re-blooms as it progresses, and though the progression doesn't execute anything much, "Innie" remains enjoyable throughout.
Fooling Me Twice [Melodic] | (/100)
The bass hit is satisfying at first, but it quickly gets old. "Fooling Me Twice" has a bounce to it, but it's an all-too-familiar bounce, and, especially when paired with the sample, this track is a somewhat derivative house tune. The springy progression introduced does help it, but not enough.
Mug [Intense] | (/100)
A crystally vocal chop flies innocently above what is quite an intense track. Powered by a fiesty little bassline and a strong sample, "Mug" doesn't get much time to assert itself, but it definitely asserts itself anyway.
Under My Skin [Standout] | (/100)
w/ Rhode
The general rhythm, the general flow of this track, is so clean. Feed Me's growly basslines once again take center stage and Rhode's vocal join it in an intricate dance across the verses, builds, and drops, intertwining and playing off each other very nicely.
Rocket Science [Melodic] | (/100)
Drums, synths, songwriting - practically every element of this song is polished. It's just not particularly memorable, especially not at this stage of the album. This is a track that has punch but is somewhat unfortunately placed.
Proud [Catchy] | (/100)
w/ Lani Daye
Lani Daye's vocal is good, and he intonates with a lot of clarity, but he relies on the hook a lot, and he's perhaps not as strong as the other two vocal performances on this album which profited a lot off being dynamic. The production is the same: well-done, but not as powerful as some of the other cuts.
Local Wildlife [Intense] | (/100)
Short and sweet, but a total banger. "Local Wildlife" takes a break from the house-dominated motifs of the album to deliver a roaring trap cut that feels acutely produced but also somewhat harsh.
The Sky, The Limit [Intense] | (/100)
Another bassier cut brings a deep, resonant sample to the table, one that gets a little annoying by the halfway mark. The flickering lead line is very nice, but it begs for progression that Feed Me doesn't quite deliver on.
Too Easy [Switchup] | (/100)
A juddering, brash cut that fully commits to its execution in a way that "Local Wildlife" wasn't quite able to do. I find the techno switch a little empty, but the stabby basses sell the first half well enough for "Too Easy" to be a gratifying switch.
Let Monica Go [Melodic] | (/100)
Feed Me takes a stab at stutter house to round off this album with a longer, progressive cut exhibiting some lovely bright melodies and cascading sound design. The vocal chops sell the track, ultimately - Feed Me arranges them in a flickering melody that punctuates every movement of this finale.
- Under My Skin w/ Rhode (/100)
- Innie (/100)
- Pyro w/ EMSKI (/100)
- Spectral Feel (/100)
- Mug (/100)
- Let Monica Go (/100)
- Too Easy (/100)
- Local Wildlife (/100)
- Proud w/ Lani Daye (/100)
- The Sky, The Limit (/100)
- Rocket Science (/100)
- Fooling Me Twice (/100)