The Beat Surrender

It’s not easy being a much loved and highly demanded production team as The Neptunes are, when you then try and turn your hand away from other peoples music, onto your own. It brings with it a certain pressure and I guess a need to try and show off your studio tricks and diversity across what you are recording.

This I feel is something that N*E*R*D have battled with throughout their side-project career, the first album had to be re-recorded as they wanted to change the whole ethic and sound of the album…and it worked in my opinion.

For Fly Or Die their sophomore album they looked to bring a more chart friendly edge to their sound and while it didn’t scale the heights of their first album it did succeed in achieving what they set out to do, selling by the bucket load and producing a number of hit singles.

It’s been four years and numerous other solo and joint projects since that album though and now they are back with a third N*E*R*D album. Once again it sees Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo joined by Shae Haley on Seeing Sounds, an album that as a concept is based around synaesthesia a condition that causes people to hear sounds as colours in their mind.

As you might expect from something that has a loose and potentially mind boggling concept behind it, the sounds are typically mixed up throughout the album, which while keeping things interesting, doesn’t necessarily make for the most cohesive listen.

The high points are plentiful, Time For Some Action is a jaunty spoken word opening that resembles a musical or show track, Yeah You is the best song on the album, a brilliant jazz influenced track that is extremely catchy and would make a superb choice of single. Likewise Sooner Or Later would make for a good release as well, although subject matter wise it deals with stalking, it’s a melody laden song that gets right into your head.

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