Daydreams (Effin)

Effin's sophomore album will always live in the shadow of his debut album "Cheap Thrills" — the question is, can it outgrow that shadow? Surprisingly, I'd argue it does.

"Cheap Thrills" was, by all means, a good album. It was hailed as Effin's great magnum opus, the culmination of his innovative work in dubstep and the magnification of his widely recognised vintage aesthetic brought about by his sampling of the traditional club music of the '50s/'60s. I can say, then, safely, that this album "Daydreams" had high expectations going into it — and many may tell you they weren't achieved, but I beg to differ. For a start, "Daydreams" is simply just a much cleaner take on Effin's unique style. Where "Cheap Thrills" suffered with some technical issues like overproducing the 'bangers', thick obnoxious mixing, and a clear polarity between the club aesthetic and the festival dubstep aesthetic, "Daydreams" has none of that. All the production here is squeaky clean, and with a more minimal, slower take on his dubstep wubs, Effin is at no risk of overproduction, nor is he at fault of poor mixing. And the tracklist just feels... better. This comes, most prominently, as a result of the subtle change in mood that "Daydreams" provides. "Cheap Thrills" was, indeed, a set of cheap dubstep thrills and a couple of completely unrelated bright club tunes, and, fittingly, "Daydreams" stays equally true to its name. This record feels like Effin proving that he doesn't need to be another stomping briddim monster of a producer to maintain a full-length album, he has a bizarre aesthetic — a blend of modern bass and vintage club — and that aesthetic is all his. And this truly does feel like a blend. The feel-good vintage aesthetic feels like it really does, for some inexplicable reason, fit in here, into the dreamy interludes and synth-infused breakdowns, inhabiting the melodic tracks and permeating the heavy ones. Above all, "Daydreams" shows us that Effin is perhaps one of the most well-rounded and promising acts in the scene right now: with a remarkable style, a penchant for twisting sampling, an aptitude for melody and atmosphere, and locked-and-loaded heavy dubstep ready to fire at any given moment, the arsenal that this LP reveals is ferocious. So yes, whilst this album might lack the aggressive festival filth of "Cheap Thrills", it seems, to me, a proper maturation of Effin's style.

I've done a lot of comparison to his debut album "Cheap Thrills" here, and that album was no joke either, but "Daydreams" strikes a much more resonant chord. Something about this record feels a lot more composed and sensible than Effin's other works, even between the polarity exhibited by bright future bass tunes like "Open Your Eyes" and crushing dubstep tunes like "Bringing Me Down", and I think that's definitely what elevates this record a notch further upwards. It's still not perfect — cohesively it can still feel somewhat lacking in places, though not as much as expected with the vague half-half division, and some of these tracks feel a little boring in the grand scheme of the tracklist, but "Daydreams" marks a step up.