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In a dark forest filled with fog, you see a path. You can barely see it, but it’s there–amidst all the overgrown vines and trees so big you can only see the parts that sag low into the atmosphere to mock your nervous loss of direction with thick arms and sexy, green floppy leaves. You step forward, teetering between curiosity and hesitation, and through the dense fog and tangled vines you see a throne. It’s gold and red and more seductive than a woman could ever be. On it rests a walkman with a single tape that reads “come with me.” There’s absolutely no way this is a good idea; it’s a siren in a forest. But the throne bats its eyelashes and teases your interest and your feet approach as your mind screams “TURN AROUND”. You press play, ‘Intro’ begins, and yellow eyes emerge to your right as a tail flits somewhere to your left, only to be gone as quick as they came. The forest has come alive irreversibly; claws scrape trunks and creatures dangle from trees, their calls echoing in unforgivable circles. You progress forward and when you look back, there’s a person’s arms on each side of the throne. When you look back again, the throne is broken on the ground and the earth eats it up. All you can do now is walk and see where the rest of the album brings you.

Sad Night Dynamite’s self-titled album brings me to this scene of terror, lust, mystery, and desire. The genre-less album is truly undefined by labels, creating its own definition through the Redbone-esque creeps and Gorillaz-style instrumentals. The album takes the listener on a journey through hip-hop, alternative, pop, punk, and electronic. Some songs will trap you, some entice you, some terrify you, some bewilder you, and all will haunt you. The artists behind SND’s new creation are Archie Blagden and Josh Graecen, a brother-like duo raised near Glastonbury: a music hotspot of the UK. They released their first album, “Sad Night Dynamite” this February after a few singles, music videos, and artist collabs and blew it out of the park.

The opening song ‘Intro’ hypnotizes the listener with an eerie piano tune, enticing us into the forest of soft chimes and haunted lullabies mimicking whispering trees. The song comes to a still ending before the tormented ticks of ‘Icy Violence’ begin. The singer is our guide as we embark on our journey, but not a very nice one. His sarcastic tone mocks the listener like a sick magician, knowing the act is deadly but loving the audience’s reaction. The beat drop snaps us into a booby trap, short guitar riffs echoing in circles as the artists swing us around and toy with our sense of sound. Long shots of synth blurt through the soundscape as ‘Killshot’ takes shape and modern-day Dracula lurks around the corner. Twangy strings and strategically placed instrumentals and voices call out from every which-way. Josh Graecen, one half of the duo, explains in an interview with music and culture magazine NME that they pull from three main influences, one of them being American hip hop artists like “Dr. Dre, MadLib, MF DOOM, Schoolboy Q, [and] Snoop Dog” (Source: NME). ‘Killshot’ echoes these legends with a uniquely creepy twist, a result of the duo’s diverse music background. The next song, ‘Mountain Jack’ incorporates more pop and alt-rock influences with a higher-pitched instrumental and tick of a snare. It embodies the over-confidence of dancing in a mirror alone and walking with your shoulders too far back as your demons creep insidiously behind. The singers sound close to disgusted as they sing “don’t cry near me,” connecting back to the “crying over nothing” mantra that they repeat throughout the album as well as in their Spotify artist bio. The lyrics in this album toggle between eerie storytelling and honest vulnerability.

The lone plucked strings in ‘Krunk’ set us in the fiery caves of an underground video game while the distorted shadow of a chorus imitates spoken word through layers of hands held tight to the mouth. This is the first song in the album where they really spit, showing off their rap skills in between strained wubs and conversational chorus. BROCKHAMPTON and Kendrick Lamar influences emerge as a high-pitched falsetto alter-ego juxtaposes matter-of-fact storytelling. There is a conversation between three characters in this song. It begs the question, are these really three different characters or is it the intimate interactions one has inside their own mind? ‘Crying Over Nothing (Pt. II)’ further solidifies this motif of privileged white-kid whining, similar to the way Frank Ocean’s ‘Super Rich Kids’ pokes fun at the “hardships” of being pampered. This was an intentional and strategic usage of this trope. The duo was “trying to find a way to talk about how gross and unfair [their] privilege is without being too altruistic about it” (Source: NME). They perform a delicate dance between acknowledging their privilege and personal struggles without asking for sympathy. They know that they are knocking on the door of a hip-hop culture that is not their own, but they have done their best to be respectful and make unique, non-appropriative work.

The nightmarish ‘Skully’ is a halloween anthem with ghost-like instrumentals and a taunting singer. The words “silence” and “violence” pause the beat, highlighting these two cornerstone ideas in the album. This song creates vivid imagery of a melted brain oozing down the drain, surrealism taking over the mind while logical thinking empties into a disposal. The next song ‘Smoke Hole’ has a psychedelic-pop disorientation as if someone has secretly slipped something in your drink and this song is the realization that you’ve been drugged. The abrupt ending into the sound of soft waves gives way to the final song, ‘Mussel Bay.’ ‘Mussel Bay’ begins with a screech but descends into an idyllic guitar and soft wavy beat, gently carrying us back to reality after the fantastical dream meets nightmare journey on which Sad Night Dynamite has just taken us. 

You begin to see the edge of the forest and slowly emerge from the fog, the animals still gawking and trees still cackling behind you, to find that the sun is in that deep brightness it gets around 4:00 in the summer and you begin to make your way home. You carry your experience with you, looking behind to see if the forest was even real, if the soundtrack was just a smoke screen or if the journey really happened. You look down to find the walkman still in your hand and press play again, from the start, but all you hear is static. The tape is blank, no more writing on the side. You inhale with the sudden knowledge that it’s the same air you breathed before entering the forest; it’s you that’s changed.