- Gage's last EP, Mercury, was exactly that: a slippery substance, morphing fluidly between forms. Its followup takes a more definite shape, but it's not the one you might expect. 2017 STAY PARO even features a pensive piano moment, the minute-long "Tyler's Interlude." It's tough to say goodbye—at least for now—to the producer who brought us steely club bangers like "Bad Bitch" and "Telo." But Gage's ambitious new vision is also worth paying attention to.
The EP favours a palette of sounds and moods over standalone musical moments. At first that mood is nightmarish on tense, dramatic tracks that have little to do with the dance floor. The pungent sound design stands out—like on "Deps," where looped vocals emit excruciating cascades of reverb, or "lil boro," a stilted slow-building track doused in running water at the climax. Later on, this mood gives way to dark euphoria. "bix" is a frisky grime track swaddled in overdriven synth pads. "Flash Pattern" is a trance breakdown gone wrong.
This is all in service to a theme. Gage feels he has been "continually let down and frustrated by the world" recently, not least on a political level. The message hinges on "wait, Wat," in which a man recounts his rough handling by bouncers and police on a night out, while celestial chords hit a distorted crescendo. Police brutality is one of the noughties' defining issues, but there are gaps in this story—the narrator "can't really remember" what he said or did to cause a bouncer to put him in a headlock. This ambiguity complicates the track's sense of righteous rage, which might explain why the closing barrage of kick drums doesn't hit home. There's another attempt at thunderous catharsis with "Kaya," which starts off as industrial hip-hop before going all Perc. But the arrangement is too cluttered and the sound too flat to have the intended impact. On 2017 STAY PARO, Gage's music takes on a firmer form, but it's still a little rough around the edges.
Tracklist01. TBT/Flashback
02. Deps
03. lil boro
04. wait, Wat
05. Tyler's Interlude
06. Kaya
07. bix
08. Flash Pattern