Escape – Norfik • '22 Staff Picks
Somewhere between commercial success and deep underground legacy there lies an untouched gray area few musicians choose to explore. With media and art being extremely accessible, there seems to be a common perception that art must be marketed and seen. Things must be made to either create commercial success or embed someone’s name among some type of underground lineage where the artist is mostly known by those who are most “in-tune” with the music, yet their level of skill is deeply respected by both their most novice of peers and those who have achieved the highest of accolades.
At a time when it feels like someone has dropped a new project every other month and content constantly feels as if it’s being force fed to us by algorithms, it’s become harder and harder to find projects that leave an impressionable mark deep enough to be remembered through all the static. However, if one dives deep enough into the hyper-concentrated ocean of media readily available to us through DSPs and free download links, one will sometimes find a new pearl that is hard to forget.
An example I found this year was Chicago-based producer and composer Norfik’s Escape. A six-track EP that unboundedly explores the sonic characteristics of IDM, ambient, and club-ready jungle music while cohesively piecing these concepts together in a way that can only be described as liberating. Ominous chord progressions, hazily evolving drone pads, sound-system engulfing basslines, snappy vocal samples, and surgically chopped Amen breaks affably flirt with one another throughout the project. No single element on any track overbears the others, thus making each song feel deeply honest and organic. The tightly chopped vocal samples sporadically layered over a deep and melancholic synth pad on a track like “Don’t Ja Know” felt just as amiable to the ear as the police scanner sample haunting over snapping drum breaks on a track like “Tunnel.”
Escape’s soundscape is meditative as it is rambunctious, and each song feels like a stream of consciousness being nonchalantly disburdened out into the world. The project consisting of songs that were once B-sides hibernating inside the Chicago-based producer’s hard drive exemplifies how beautiful music —and art in general—can be when made for the sheer purpose of creating. Escape being released without a rollout plan, no extensive promotional campaign, nor social co-signs behind the project from beaming stars in the electronic music world, Norfik released an album that exists for listeners to simply enjoy if they find it. With there being no frills, no theatrics, and no sense of an overzealous thirst for fame behind this project, Escape still managed to catch my attention more than most albums.