I put CTRL on to test some headphones and forgot I was supposed to be listening for the headphones. Tomatow builds this around Papa Khan’s vocal, a hybrid-trap thing that leans as much on songwriting as on the drop, which is rarer in this corner than it should be. The verses simmer, all restraint and space, Papa Khan’s voice sitting close and intimate before the beat kicks the doors open. When the drop hits it goes wide and heavy without losing the melody, a bass sound that snarls under the topline rather than swallowing it whole. There’s a stutter-edit on the vocal right before the second drop that acts like a countdown, ratcheting the tension a notch past comfortable. Trap gets accused of being all drop and no song, and CTRL is a decent rebuttal, a track where you’d happily hear the vocal with no beat under it at all. Tomatow doesn’t have much of a footprint yet, which is genuinely surprising given how assured this sounds. On this evidence Papa Khan should be guesting on twice as many tracks as he currently is.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.