Every once in a while, an artist releases a project that works its way through the fog of your headspace and gently wafts the dust and clouds off for moments stretched out into the area of calm. Faizan’s new EP, Lately/These Days exemplifies such a record. Steering into a chill-hop territory, it combines introspection and tongue-in-cheek humor that leaves you smiling to yourself with the casual conclusions maneuvering self-awareness gently, without knifing through your brain or impaling something unnecessary.
The first track, Firse? featuring co-producer Alchemii, has a soundscape that is understated, relying on the artist’s relaxed delivery. If one is familiar with lo-fi music, or chill-hop, the production would not seem unfamiliar, the light percussion, the keys and slight but clever and intentional playing with the vocals are all features one would associate with this genre of music. However, instead of going the route of overpowering the elements he is working with in order to bend them into something forceful, he utilizes them to their best, creating something that is easy on the ears and the mind.
The second track on the album, NICENICE, that has Kriday accompanying the artist, is the promoted lead single off the EP, and has a music video for itself. It is catchy, playful, and toys and puts a spin on the toxic-boy catchphrase, as evidenced by the artist crooning, “Stop fallin’ in love with me/I’m just nice nice/I’m just nice nice/I can’t help it/I’m just nice.” It is quite masterful, because the crux of the track primarily rests on the artist’s delivery of the same, and it would have slipped into the more-so cliched trope of the DHH troubled male that has been meandering into predictable, generic territories as of late. One gets reminded of NICE by The Carters, especially with the choruses of both the songs — although The Carters stick to hip-hop, while Faizan and Kriday find themselves sprinkling RnB tonalities over the chill-hop beats.
Sabka/Apna is the most self-reflective track on the EP, while also being my personal standout for this. What Faizan does on this EP as a whole translates best into this track in particular, where he condenses his emotions, anecdotes, experiences and narratives into a pleasantly relatable output, one that resonates with a lot of people while leaving multiple spaces open to interpret meanings or make new ones. The artist croons “Kayde samhal ke/Dairo mein hee rehke/Kya mila/Hogaya main sabka/Par apna hee nahi,” and the sentiment is an accessible one, that most audiences will be familiar with.
The last track, Tum Bhi, featuring Deorachit, draws out the process of more demure, inward songwriting. The production is great, and the usage of tiny audio quirks interjecting through the mostly ambient soundscape is appropriate for lyrics like “Mujhko sab kuch mil gaya hai/Phir kyu laga hai/Aisa jaise maine kuch bhi naa kiya.”
What is a chronic problem with EPs like that of Faizan, is that artists often find themselves in a corner where they rely so much on the lofi/chill production that they deny the tracks their own personality or let go of lyricism in favor of minimalism — it is good to see that in this case, the artist stands to be an exception. He mostly manages to strike a balance, where the tracks do not dissolve into background music you recline into tuning out. The 4-track length works in the EP’s favor, because it maintains the cohesiveness necessary to keep audience retentivity — one can easily see the EP turning into tedious or uninteresting if this leaned into being a longer project while maintaining the kind of sonic identity the project is going for. For a debut composite venture, Lately/First Days is great, and now it is to be seen what Faizan does in the future, when he develops more elaborate records — one knows that the pitfalls of chill-hop is that it tends to get repetitive until one cracks the code of continuous experimentation and identity assertion. However, there is good reason to hope for bigger, better things — this EP is proof of that.
