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ev.exi - Forget

UK Future Funk producer ev.exi returns with an excellent future funk album on Neoncity Records. His 2017 album Remember originally released on Future Society Collective and released on vinyl under Coraspect Records, this album shook the future funk scene and breathed new life into it along with some other up and comers such as Fibre and Melonade. This new album Forget is sure to be an album many future funk fans will have their eyes and ears on.

     The track ‘untitled’ starts us with his typical choppy future funk formula with a thumping drum line but throws us for a loop with some more unexpected sounds, such as a glitchy section where it almost sounds like a hard drive failing and glitching, adding some amazing texture and variety to the song. Some amazing guitar lines carry on through a section adding some amazing groove and funk to the track. Later in the song we get some incorporation of Daft Punk like vocals chopped to a fine slice, adding even more variety. This first track is an excellent overall opener of fast-paced slices of sound hitting in a perfectly arranged sequence, coming together to create a rainbow technicolour first track that makes it nearly impossible not to dance to and would probably make a really compelling Beat Saber level.

     The track Call Stack brings a pretty typical setup of a sample being chopped in a small loop and fading in and out on each beat. This track has some really hard hitting and compelling drums. Overall the track is more repetitive than the last track, slowing us down a bit, with a typical future funk song, just really finely tuned. It, like ‘untitled’, has some moments of interesting sonic diversion, such as a full Death's Dynamic Shroud-style glitch and synth solo. And the latter half of the track his this killer broken up piano chord loop, making the track, once again, irresistible for the body to not move.

    The track Getting Late ft. Desired (Future Funk Artist and Neoncity Records staple) is next and it overall brings, once again, just a really solid, perfectly produced wave of quick little audio snippets being thrown at the listener all at once to create an incredibly compelling groove with nice little pockets of sound to focus on on a second listen.  The drums on this project really are fantastic, along with ev.exi’s ear for creating little audio beats of tiny sample slices that fit perfectly together in a compact space, is what really shines the most this project.

    The title track Forget brings a more drum-based intro, and focuses less on vocal chops as the rest of the album does before this track. This track uses less vocal samples than a lot of the previous tracks and his talent for audio design really shines in this one, with bell 4-counts, and glittery and sweet synth lines being the main melody, the track, later does shift into some really harsh sounding almost dubstep-drop type synth leads.

    Auto Filter continues the albums feel of all killer, no filler, once again bringing a compelling drum beat and insane maelstrom of amazing, multi-layered textures and groove to get lost in, with interesting little instrumental diversions into a completely different sounding synth line or something else that he is turning into a near magical talent in this project. The synths on this track just kill me, reminding the listener of Discovery-era Daft Punk playing the keytar.

    Slow, while not slow by any means, is pretty slow compared to the rest of the albums near constant barrage of compelling groove. It provides a bit of a much needed break before the last track xoxo. It starts of with more of a synthwave style, just a singular synth line with a bass and some nice drums. The track is reminiscent of HOME but brings its own faster ev.exi take on it and the track closes with some beautiful wobbly synth chords.

    The album closing track is xoxo and is another more synth based track and is a beautiful hard hitting closer, with another killer baseline that this album specializes in, some good drums, and two layers of amazing synth goodness, a while into the track we do get some vocal chops popping in and out of the mix in a typical style.

    Overall this album was a killer release with some of the most downright amazing, fast paced future funk ever laid on human ears. Tiny chops of audio slamming into time with precision and groove, funky basslines, killer drums, and amazing vocal sample usage, along with some killer synth work makes this easily one of the best future funk releases of this year and maybe of the genre so far. Ev.exi has really proved himself with this one as one of the greats of the scene and someone to keep an eye on.