Never one to pass up an opportunity to self-aggrandize, Kanye West famously immortalized his work ethic on his debut album. “You can't fathom my love, dude,” he declared. “Lock yourself in a room doing five beats a day for three summers… I deserve to do these numbers.” It’s an axiom that’s motivated countless would-be artists in the decade and a half since: You want to be as good as Kanye? Put your nose to the grindstone and eventually you’ll get there. Even if the stuff you make is middling, nobody will hear it but you. Unless you want them to.
Text While Driving If You Want to Meet God!, a 71-track collection of bits and beats from Frank Ocean collaborator Vegyn, lays his hard drive bare. It’s a showcase of interesting drafts; an honest recording of the London multi-hyphenate’s musical trials since the relatively concise (but similarly cheeky) All Bad Things Have Ended—Your Lunch Included in 2014. Only a handful of songs reach the two-minute mark, and their nonsensical, diaristic titles suggest a busy artist tapping in the first phrase that comes to mind.
Throughout the largely instrumental Text, the artist born Joe Thornalley toys with ambient, hip-hop, and dramatically sound-stretched electronica. Vegyn also explores emotive ’80s synths and electric pianos, an affinity he shares with countless other producers looking to tap into that classic Vangelis magic. He writes crystalline arpeggios, invoking Nobuo Uematsu and other great video game composers, while his drums, if they’re present at all, rarely impose. The lack of structure makes Text even more of a mood record, something to put on in the background of a low-key gathering that won’t distract from conversation.
There are moments of brilliance, like the woozy twinkles on “Try and Do a Cd After That (132 Bpm),” the electric piano melancholia of “Sadly Does It (123 Bpm),” or the interplay of guitar and drums on “Save Yall Ready Know What It Is 003 (138 Bpm),” which evokes one of Vegyn’s best Endless contributions, “Slide on Me.” While the music is hardly uninspired, the abundance of micro-exercises highlights just how prosaic even the most beautiful chords can be when, given no purpose within the context of a song, they’re teased out and left to dry.
There isn’t much polish to be found here, either. Mastering levels can vary dramatically from track to track, forcing the listener to continuously reach for the volume, and the alphabetical sorting—an inherent result of the album’s framing as a track dump—makes sequencing moot. That’s sort of the point. This is raw Vegyn: an artist pulling back the curtain to reveal the scattered pieces of recorded music littering his cutting-room floor. Like the recent Radiohead OK Computer leaks, Text reveals genre-spanning influences and methodologies. Vegyn is clearly a gifted producer and an inventive arranger. What remains to be seen is whether he can focus those promising creative energies to deliver songs that are less fleeting.
