Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
When I was in college I spent a lot of time listening to beats that amateur producers had uploaded to YouTube, tracks shared with anime thumbnails and titles like “KID CUDI/BIG SEAN TYPE BEAT” or “TRAP INSTRUMENTAL 130 BPM (2014).” Almost every one of these videos featured the same request in the video description: listen with headphones.
For the most part these beats weren’t great and headphones did little to improve them. Still, it was always worth throwing a pair on because, hidden in this sea of overcompressed mixes with uninspired high hats and too much bass, were kids using FL Studio or Garageband to do incredible things. It was definitely a crapshoot, but at any point you might click into a 90 view video that somehow had the coolest synth you’d ever heard or expertly programmed 808s that shook your skull. When that happened, you’d want headphones on to make sure you caught these strokes of genius that are hard to appreciate over Macbook speakers alone. It was just a really exciting time in general to be making and finding new music; laptops and DAWs were becoming more accessible, and as folks who had long dreamed of turning the songs in their heads into something tangible finally got their hands on the means to do so there, was a real sense of exploration and of play in what was coming out.
Now, I feel it can be harder to find things that capture this feeling, part of which is certainly because my recollections are colored by nostalgia. Still, I think that — in this new era when anyone can get a near PhD in production from free instructionals on YouTube — more people are coming at creation with a tactical and technical approach when fending for themselves in the past they might have taken a more circuitous route in their learning and found some beautiful weirdness along the way. While I’m not hearing as much bad stuff anymore, I’m also hearing less stuff that makes me stop and go, “woah, what?”
On CIAO MALZ’s new EP Safe Then Sorry we get the best of both worlds. The songwriting and production on the EP are both fundamentally solid, but what really makes the project stand out is the inventive, sometimes off-the-wall sonics that wrap themselves around this strong foundation. One example can be found on the second verse of “Two Feet Tall,” the EP’s opener and lead single, where the swirling airy vibes from verse one are interrupted by the addition of what sounds like a slightly detuned saxophone sneaking into the mix under Malia DelaCruz’s vocals. The dissonance that’s created is unexpected and attention-grabbing, and its resolution in the transition to chorus two gives the hook an extra triumphant feel. The track’s choruses are the type that reward you for wearing headphones, stacked with layers of sound in which you can discover new things upon each listen.
Where “Two Feet Tall” showcases DelaCruz’s ability to create a vibe by employing arrangement and production tricks, track two “Bad for the Bad Guy” shows that she’s just as compelling without them. Here we get a song that works with a stripped-down pallet, a more raw presentation of her vocals taking center stage to impress. “I feel like Mary Shelley in 1818,” she sings over laidback drums and acoustic guitar at the track’s start before being joined by her own voice harmonizing as she continues: “getting bored and do something extraordinary.” These harmonies are the star of this song, sometimes moving in unexpected ways, the more sparse production allowing them to cut straight through to your heart. Though “Bad for the Bad Guy” is sonically more simple than “Two Feet Tall,” we still get some curveballs. One of these again comes on the second verse when a subtle pitched-way-down vocal is added to the harmony for just a few words, disappearing as quickly as it arrived and drawing your attention in a way that’s only identifiable upon closer examination. It’s these little touches that make this EP such a repeat listen for me. I just keep finding something new every time I go back.
The yearning closer “Gold Rush” is maybe my favorite track on the whole project, a song where clean guitar arpeggios serve as a canvas for ethereal synths and lead guitar to paint as DelaCruz sings of bittersweet attraction. The descending guitar leads during the song’s hook are honey to the ears, perfectly complimenting DelaCruz as she sings, “Like the gold rush / How you know stuff / And you know what / Baby, good luck.”
Featured throughout the track is a synth that sounds a bit like an angel singing through a sea of reverb and tremolo. It appears first in short stabs on the chorus and then in a more extended role in the track’s outro dancing and harmonizing with the lead guitar as things draw to a close, almost becoming a character in itself. I was intrigued by its first brief appearance in the chorus and then felt this interest was rewarded by the way it returned in the outro. This more than maybe anything else represents why I enjoyed Safe Then Sorry so much. It’s an EP that rewards careful listening, with the kind of nooks and crannies that only can come from an artist approaching their work with a sense of exploration rather than a paint by numbers fealty to any particular genre or sound. It’s the kind of project that invites multiple listens, and when you check it out you’ll want to make sure that at least once that you listen with headphones.
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
Safe Then Sorry is out now.
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Josh Ejnes | @joshejnes
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