Raise The Black Flag - Teminite

Teminite dives headfirst into a pirate themeing. And who doesn't like pirates? Nobody, that's who.

I suppose a better question would be: who doesn't like Teminite? And again, the answer is probably nobody. So when I say that his fourth studio album "Raise The Black Flag" is his best, that is no small praise. Truthfully, though, that praise is well-earned. A beloved producer in dubstep—and not just dubstep; if you've ever played popular rhythm games like Beat Saber, the electronic alias of Sam Norris might just be a familiar name to you—Teminite's one of the strongest players in the game. You'd be pressed to find a badly produced Teminite track, because every time he creates, he brings his blend of old-school wubs with modern melodies and production, and he brings absolute fire along with it. That, subsequently, gives "Raise The Black Flag" a tracklist of some of the nastiest brostep there is, along with some of the cleanest bass music there is. Expectations were high, and Teminite delivers. What makes "Raise The Black Flag" so special, though, is its creativity, as it sees Teminite finally present to us his imaginative artistry in the form of... pirates. Yes, the concept is a little bit iffy, but it's a whole lotta fun. The pirate themeing lends a much-needed chaotic energy to the project, one that justifies the all-guns-blazing approach Teminite is known for, but also one that incorporates a ridiculousness to it that gives this LP a special charm to it, an charm that's creative and unabashedly goofy. Perhaps a little too unabashedly goofy, however, because a lot of the themeing can feel very on-the-nose and a little bit cringe-inducing—whilst I do respect Teminite for his boldness on the conceptual aspects, I can't help but feel that it's a bit overdone.

Teminite is one of those artists who got me into electronic music, and I'm very happy to say that "Raise The Black Flag" is a fantastic project. It runs into a few problems, though—namely, the aforementioned themeing, but also that I'd have loved Teminite to go a little harder on a few more tracks—and so that puts this project as a brilliant project on paper, but not without its flaws, flaws that seem insignificant but also seem to aggregate when you look at the project in its bigger picture.