A trip into Neon Future.
DJ/producer and Dim Mak Records boss, Steve Aoki has served us his vision of the future in the form of his new album “Neon Future I”. The album, comprises of 10 songs including a 2-minute intro and a 90-second outro, just barely allowing for “Neon Future I” to be labelled as an album as compared to an EP.
“Neon Future I” opens with “Transendence”, featuring an interesting spoken vocal by Ray Kurzweil. Going along the lines “In the neon future, we’re going to transcend and overcome the limitations that have plagued us for thousands of years…”, the opener dictates a brand new idea of what the future is going to be like in the views of Aoki.
“Transendence” then leads into the title track “Neon Future” featuring Luke Steele of Empire Of The Sun”. The track hits us with the beat right away, but the vocal unfortunately feels a little disjointed. For some reason, Steele’s vocal and Aoki’s heavy beats just don’t go arm in arm and it’s quite confusing, if I must say so myself.
Personally, my favourite tracks on the record were “Born To Get Wild” featuring Will.I.Am and “Delirious (Boneless)” featuring Chris Lake & Tujamo and Kid Ink.
“Born To Get Wild” features big bad Aoki drops and delivers a big dose of colourfully painted futuristic ideals that the album promises while “Delirious (Boneless)”, which has been doing the rounds for some time now, is an upbeat, EDM-worthy track that is well, quite delirious, in a good way of course.
The album comes to an end with “Beyond Boundaries”, a 90-second outro that bookends “Transendence” nicely with a spoken vocal by Aubrey de Grey. “Neon Future I” shows that Aoki can play with different genres and undoubtably deliver some massive party anthems, but it is ultimately nothing new, nothing groundbreaking.
I’m a little unsure as to how I feel about the whole record to be honest. I don’t hate it nor do I love it because despite it being full of EDM bangers and superstar collaborations, the record just seems to fall short of what I would imagine to be an idealistic future. With that being said though, there is potential in Aoki’s future vision, so I am hoping that Part II delivers what Part I failed to do.
As you may already heard by now, Hype.My (that’s us) are giving away 5 autographed copies of Steve Aoki’s album “Neon Future I” courtesy of Sony Music Malaysia so be sure to not miss out on it! 😉
