Visually and creatively appealing for their equally impressive pasts, L.O.U and Big O collaborate extensively throughout the superb and enthralling new hip hop album Journey Of Choices (An Awakening Mind).
Releasing on Vintage Soundz, the album celebrates everything we’ve come to love about these two freethinking creatives of the underground scene.
Constantly breaking down barriers and rolling with the punches in terms of passion and artistry, the sound has a timeless warmth and professionalism about it, but there are also respectable depths and clear layers of soulful longing scattered around throughout, and this elevates things all the more so.
Journey Of Choices (Intro) sets the bar high and the mood accordingly, with blissful production as ever, and spoken-word fragments for dynamic and a quickly inspiring, purposeful core that connects for its clear humanity and heart.
We’re then thrown directly into the pace and presence of L.O.U, with a gritty and consciously captivating Depression on the 18th – the meat of the project speaks out, holds you closely, inspires a sense of openness and oneness in this space of vulnerability and reality.
Avenue Of The Aspects marks a defiant highlight, ambient and emotive in its blending of organic piano patterns, nostalgic rhythms, and cleanly mixed, poetically captivating bars. The groove is stunning, then we get depth, intention, personal grit and honesty – a winning combination for a memorable, hypnotic and compelling stand-out.
Indigo River and Reality Hits are equally engaging, for different reasons. The former injects a brightness and joyful groove, melodic embrace and imagery, the latter keeps things aptly contemplative and reflective regarding the personal journey and the truths of the world. Both energise and inspire, and so the wave-like evolution of the project goes on.
Big O’s production is consistently raising the bar, second to none in tone and design, skill. The collaborative effort naturally progresses things all the more so. L.O.U’s name is an acronym – Let’s Obliterate the Universe – a concept encapsulated throughout his devotedly passionate writing and performances, not least of all across the 12 original tracks of this album.
Introducing a handful of impressive features, the project is one that keeps on giving – spend time with one track, repeat visit, and later move on to another for an entirely different series of thoughts and feelings and lyrically complex, intelligent bars, which effortlessly highlight the peaks of possibility in rap.
Beautiful, pure, catchy, uplifting, honest, outright impressive in a strangely humble or quietly confident way. An absolute must for the year ahead, and beyond.
Album out now. Check out L.O.U on Twitter & follow Big O on Twitter & Instagram.
