Review Summary: restless minds go to sleep with the most vivid dreams
You know what my favorite hours of the day are? The smallest ones; those itty-bitty newborn hours crawling around in the void of darkness, personifying the birth of a new day; the earliest and the latest times of the day. Who cares? You don’t. But I’m convinced TOKiMONSTA’s
Creature Dreams EP does. Before I tell you why this record gets a pristine five out of five stars, you should know that this Los Angeles native girl knows how to evoke the peaceful tranquility of the nighttime like no one else. Her vibes are
sensational, and she seems to be able to change your mood differently with each and every song she puts out. With her debut full-length album
Midnight Menu, she shows incredible versatility with a highly dynamic collection of songs made up of sugar, spice and hip-hop delights, that could transform and blossom completely within the songs’ duration. She’s vibrant and full of life, and at the same time subdued and collected, much like her fellow Brainfeeder labelmate
Teebs, and has a deliciously artsy imagination.
Creature Dreams may be only 7 tracks long, but it packs more competent ideas and consistency than
Midnight Menu did in twice that length. Nothing here aims for “weird” appeal; it is simply Jennifer Lee’s most tasteful and atmospheric work yet. To say she can paint a picture would be an understatement: no, her music here is mood-food to be savored and regurgitated for hours on end, playing and playing in your head to that deep thought you were thinking in bed or burning away your evening like a smoky, subdued candlewick. When “Fallen Arches” takes you by hand, you’re sitting before a polished, reflective bar counter where you gaze at the travesty of the light fixtures and drift off into a content daze, where “Little Pleasures” manifests in your mind. As seems to be the motif here, restless minds go to sleep with the most vivid dreams, choreographed by “Bright Shadows” and “Moving Forward”, and then indulged into by “Darkest (Dim)”, where serenity and content converge into one entity. All of
Creature Dreams’ tracks put Lee’s vibes to perfect use by trimming out the nonsense and letting ideas flow peacefully and freely like only vast darkness and cool winds could induce.
