STATIONS - Saint Punk

Known for pioneering the 'grunge house' sound, Saint Punk releases his relatively low-key sophomore album, and it's a lot better than I thought it would be.

"STATIONS" is both an proposal of vengeance and an indictment of it. Troubled in its motifs, "STATIONS" foregrounds a dark, gritty production style in Saint Punk's established grungey niche that encompasses every element of this record, from strong vocal performances to the diverse production. Because, well, the production is indeed diverse — despite primarily residing in bass house (and, by extension, grunge house), Saint Punk branches out into plenty of alternative bass genres like trap or liquid drum n bass — and something's got to tie it all together, with the tonality being the obvious answer. "STATIONS" is gloomy, grave and grim, a sentiment expressed in both the powerful vocal performances and the hard-hitting production, particularly for its first half. This first half is quite honestly brilliant — a couple of well-polished vocal features work fantastically well to anchor the bass ideas in Saint Punk's sound design, rooted in motifs of revenge and almost angry in its delivery; backed by production that isn't always polished to its maximum, but production that nevertheless moves with energy and grit, well-produced enough to hold up under technical analysis and free enough to be creative and bold. Though some of the trap-leaning stuff is not quite my thing, Saint Punk still executes it in an engaging manner, and it leaves the first half of this tracklist as a compellingly dark movement that packs emotion, atmosphere, and intensity in equal amounts. Unforunately, the second half does leave a lot to be desired. With a sampling style that seems entirely centered on being repetitive, Saint Punk takes all the good things he did in the first movement and transfers approximately none of it, even failing to maintain the atmosphere at times. It's not a badly produced movement by any means, it just sucks out much of what made the first one so special, and even with a couple of good tracks embedded in it (including the chill house finale), "STATIONS" starts off very strong and ends off with a lot to be desired — that includes it structure, which seems conceptually interesting in the track titling but ultimately doesn't amount to much.

But, credit where credit is due, it's still a good project. Though the second movement was pretty inoffensive — too inoffensive — and I'd have loved to see something more innovative with the roots of the present structural concept, Saint Punk still brings some of the best of his style to this project, and it shows. So whilst "STATIONS" does have its drawbacks, it remains as an overall substantial album.