Passerby - Neddie

The line between melodic and heavy continues to be blurred in the electronic scene, and underground producer Neddie is here to break down those walls even more.

He does so in his debut album "Passerby", one that demonstrates his technical skills almost as well as it does his production range. I dub this colour bass with hesitancy — Neddie explores plenty of styles both within and outside of bass music — and yet there's something about his blend of melodic and heavy that takes on an unabashedly colourful style. From wave to ambient, brostep to drum n bass, Neddie still maintains his hold over the tracklist and "Passerby" is well-controlled as a result, quite intentionally so — like the restraint of a passerby observing external life through the tinted frames of their internal struggles. Control lends itself to consistency, and Neddie delivers on both fronts, packaged tightly with clean production — and, in particular, some brilliant melodies — that promises a lot of stability for the record amidst its genre-shifting variance. But, production aside, what makes "Passerby" truly potent is its ability to exist in an album context, perhaps even more solidly than each track exists in their own individual contexts. Complete with transitions to blend tracks together, "Passerby" presents a certain diluted emotion that is uncannily easy to immerse oneself in — a diluted emotion that thrives on ethereal, floaty atmospheres and melodic synth runs, but occasionally lashes out with heaviness (see "Drift") or sheer energy (see the finale "Time passes anyway"). Though largely instrumental, something about the production here is enough to invoke a vague yet powerful emotive aspect, as Neddie moves through euphoria and introspection alike, sometimes in the sampling but mostly in the cleverly written tracks of the project. True, "Passerby" only lasts for 9 tracks, but in some way the shorter length contributes to its success, not needing to overstay its welcome to prove its point and striking the perfect balance between length and brevity to be both satisfying emotionally and always engaging.

Engaging as a project, yes, but some of these tracks tend to bore me in an individual context. I thoroughly appreciate the holistic project's structure but the tracks can occasionally lose themselves structurally by failing to commit to a specific idea — like the juxtaposition between the heavy first half and the relaxed second half of "Drift" — and that makes them difficult to consume on their own, and sometimes interrupts the ebb and flow of the record by cutting certain sections a little too short. And yet, this will surely be Neddie's breakthrough project, and it sure deserves it, as a fantastic debut album.