TOKiMONSTA
Fovere
Reviewed by: Max Miller
Jennifer Lee, better known as TOKiMONSTA, may not be a household name yet, but she’s been steadily blowing up the Los Angeles beat scene for nearly a decade now. She’s remixed artists from Yacht to Shlohmo to Justin Timberlake, and notably caught the attention of Flying Lotus, — perhaps the household name in modern electronic music — whose Brainfeeder Records released her debut full-length back in 2010. Fovere, Lee’s fourth full-length, is a mini-album, released, like its predecessor Desiderium, on her own Young Art imprint.
At a scant twenty-some-odd minutes, one might be pressed to call Fovere an EP, but TOKiMONSTA manages to fit an album’s worth of diverse ideas and production into its seven tracks. Opener “I’m Waiting” is a slow-burning, R&B-indebted chill-session that never quite reaches the explosion at which it hints. That particular energy burst is reserved for the club-ready “Put It Down,” which features the ever-charismatic Anderson .Paak, who has been generating a great deal of buzz lately over his recently-released Malibu. This cut is by far the most conventionally-appealing composition, with its anthemic bass-drop synth refrain and trap hi-hat. On the flip-side of that coin is “Giving Up,” which features the Drums’ Jonny Pierce on vocals and a funky synth-line during the chorus which feels more amicable for cruising the streets of L.A. at night than spending the evening in the club.
“Starlight Lace” is structured around a densely-layered network of percussion and Grimes-like anime-character vocals. It serves as a reminder of how many dynamics TOKiMONSTA can capably include in a mere three minutes — a quality that can be easy to forget when Lee masterfully structures her tracks to take a backseat to vocals, as on the Kiya Lacey-featuring “Heart On The Ground.” This is even more noticeable on “Penny,” where Lee’s classical piano training shines. Gavin Turek, a close friend of Lee’s who is signed to her Young Art label, delivers the lead here, and you can feel the love TOKiMONSTA has for her fellow artist in how carefully she has crafted the comparatively minimalistic track to shine an unwavering spotlight on Turek.
Fovere closes with “Wound Up,” featuring Toronto’s a l l i e, which is the mini-album’s longest cut at four minutes. Yet “Wound Up,” like the album itself, feels even shorter somehow. TOKiMONSTA has proven here that it’s possible to have both quality and quantity, without sacrificing conciseness. One almost wishes Lee would remix her own songs, drawing them out past the five or six minute mark so that the listener can bathe in their uncanny atmospheres a little longer. The artist herself described Fovere as her “most complete work to date.” It’s difficult to disagree.
Rating: Bad-Ass
