- A polished set of club music songs from the South London artist.
- Felix Lee is one of those music figures who wears multiple hats: DJ, promoter, radio host, label head. He runs the roving Endless parties in London, which have hosted artists like Mykki Blanco and Endgame, and he presents a monthly NTS show under the same name. Production is yet another of those hats, through which he's explored styles within experimental club music. He made his debut on Total Freedom's 2012 Blasting Voice compilation, and collaborated as Lexxi with Elysia Crampton a few years later on her Demon City LP.
The producers drafted in to collaborate on Inna Daze, Lee's first album, make the kinds of nebulous, genre-fluid sounds typical of this record. Quantum Natives and Gaika, whose work has explored dark, post-human soundscapes, are an especially good fit. Two other collaborators, Ecco2k and Whitearmor, are from the Drain Gang collective, whose post-genre ethos also applies to Lee, whose music here incorporates everything from dancehall to rap to noise.
Until now, Lee's output has been solely instrumental, but on Inna Daze he sings on his own productions. These tracks make for some of the record's highlights. "Emeralds" wraps Lee's melancholy voice in AutoTune and dizzying FX. The bolder "Headless" is an irresistible, finely tuned demonstration of his songcraft. The production, meanwhile, is spacious and economical, in line with other haunted, atmospheric records on Planet Mu by Kuedo and Silk Road Assassins.
Lee has called the album a set of "survival ballads for the near future," though it's unclear where the record's pessimistic, post-human theme stems from. Is it the current political climate, or is a deeper sense of millennial anxiety guiding the LP? Despite the doom and gloom, Inna Daze's beauty becomes clearer each time you encounter a meticulously placed sawtooth synth, glowing pad or evocative drum roll.
Tracklist01. KOH feat. Ecco2k & Whitearmor
02. Void feat. Whitearmor
03. Focused feat. Yayoyanoh
04. Iywata
05. Like A Stain
06. Crosses
07. Sangre feat. Gaika
08. Still Torn feat. Oxhy
09. Smoke feat. Kamixlo
10. Emeralds 1
11. Unified
12. Headless
13. Slow Decay feat. Oxhy