In a sea of melted electronic digital chords we have an eternal sense of chill, slow whirlpooling swirling in the air like heavy curling weed smoke, it's an instrumental immersion in relaxing horizontal flavours that fizz and bubble with undeniable chill. This sonic aromatherapy is actually a double helping, too, so we're extra lucky that we can get a comprehensive feel for both artists carving and etching their souls online in two slightly different vessels of sound. In 'chill', Virginia rapper wilkjayy exhibits flawless rhythm with this creaking elastic tone as much as his wordplay stuns impossibly, each rhyme like a great flash, alliteration raining down as producer rocco lays down these sleepy glassy lounge chords, these crunching overdriven kicks, razor hi-hats and cannonball splash cymbals, sounding like a marble-floored gold-detailed elevator lobby in some retro-futuristic dimension.
But things take a colder turn aside from the garbled jazz of the first half of this track, as 'wavy' right away veils the world in breezy synth, muffled and breezy and all-encompassing, losing the playful edge of 'chill' and instead blooms spacey, rocco floating it up to where the air is thinner: kicks quake, handclaps and hi-hats tick-tack metallic. The spacewalk of sound is narrated by wilkjayy, who begins 'chill' slowly, low and creaky, before he breathlessly blasts lines of rapid-fire dactyls for about a minute, all based around the same hypnotic rhyme scheme: "everything that i be doin original / switching so often it's not too predictable"—ending this rolling ridge of rap with a comment on tradition within the genre: "boom bappin rappin aint nothing additional / they say they loving me no not conditional / so far above you you're hardly formidable."
The devastating virtuoso and savage calm of wilkjayy, seemingly determined to make an impact on the world, combined with the freshly juiced soul-cleansing beats of rocco, feels like a powerful partnership, and one that is only just beginning to blossom for the ears of the globe.
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Though 'chill // wavy' is technically just wilkjayy "prod by" rocco, there's a more recent collaboration between the two that labels them both as joint creators of the track. It is the wonderful, maybe equally wonderful, 'lost in the smoke', released via underground label-collective osty (oh shit that's you).
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The very sparing nature of this track is partly what makes it, the purposeful holding back on how many elements should be used and where, and secondly it is the sense of decay that eats around the edges of its sounds, providing you with a glimpse into what it might sound like transporting a feeling or a general mood from the afterlife into the waking world via digital means, or vice versa. The atmosphere in 'stress' is cold, computerised, voidsome even, yet shot through at all times with a continual warmth.
