Key takeaways:
- Riley’s blunt verses and liquid vocals are drenched in a cleaned soundscape from maker Vegyn.
- On her presentation mixtape, last year’s Interest Rates, A Tape, west London performer George Riley teamed up with maker Oliver Palfreyman to make a sonic domain where jazz, R&B, and wilderness merged. Riley offered wry and intelligent lyricism, her voice blunt but sleek.
Running in Waves is Riley’s subsequent record, and her decision partner is Vegyn, the British maker most famous for his work with Frank Ocean.
It’s a drawing in connect-up that finds Riley’s sans liquid streaming vocals completely submerged in Vegyn’s distinctively cleaned soundscapes. A few tracks highlight extravagant, floating strings; others snap with electronic errors, and, every so often, as on the record’s title track, both happen all the while. The outcome is a delicately cutting-edge R&B tape that sits someplace close by the gentler music of Kelela or Dawn Richard. It’s a flawless record – albeit, considering that Riley and Vegyn are known for their trial yield to some degree, it doesn’t feel very offbeat true to form.
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Where Riley tracks down differentiation here is in her specific topic: her longing for limits, an acknowledgment that she would rather not penance unique open doors for adoration, affirmations that she should be alright with being separated from everyone else (“Don’t want to occupy me with sex, I can’t put somebody through that once more”).
