Instrumental Insight • Owen Bones
Age: 21 • Neighborhood: Logan Square • Follow: Twitter // SoundCloud
Our newest column to be added to These Days is Instrumental Insight, where we highlight local Chicago producers that are gathering buzz throughout the city and beyond. We attempt to spotlight the talents behind the boards, providing a proper platform for the beatmakers to shine. Because while lyricism and flows are crucial, so are the instrumental backdrops that allow vocalists the inspiration to write and spit.
For our first edition of this ongoing column, we cover Owen Bones, a hyperactive talent who grabbed my attention earlier this year with the release of the three song EP, The Sabotage. With an interesting take on the approach of an EP, 21-year-old Owen Bones describes The Sabotage as three songs that chronicle "a story of self destruction that I set upon myself." He continues with adding three bullet points to the tale.
01. A storm approaches. Alarms have yet to sound.
02. An adventurer enters a dense fog. What lies beyond?
03. Fortitude in the chaos.
The three song instrumental EP combines hip-hop with EDM, bass and trap with high voltage electronica, drawing comparisons to Lunice and Hudson Mohawke's duo TNGHT. Songs like “Flying Blind” and “Sin Eater” quake out of the speakers and into the earth, begging for . Prior to this drop, at the end of 2014, Owen Bones released The Headspin EP, three songs that feel like battling the final boss in a legendary video game. Plugged in and drenched in caffeine, all of Bones' tracks give off an energy that is difficult to duplicate.
With only a minimal amount of songs under his belt, Bones appears to be selective and obsessed with high quality, only releasing the strongest of the strong, only performing with a projector of dancing visuals and memorable graphics. The technicolor video "Skull" (at the top), for example, claims to be captured without special effects or digital alteration. Aside from his EP earlier this year, Bones has released a series of remixes and reworkings, including a Towkio remix as well as his own take on Monster Mike's “Easy”. According to his Twitter, he's teasing his next EP, which may or may not already be finished, which we may or may not get to hear before 2016. Only time will tell.