Tape One! by Nu Garçon

Tape One! Is Nu Garçon’s first mixtape. Out January 26th, 2024, it is the latest release since their debut EP in 2021, and it is borne of the artist’s emergent need to self-release. The songs presented here exist comfortably within the ever-expanding Nu Garçonian cosmos, characterised as they are by diversity, torqued experimentalism, and a singular idiosyncratic sheen. But Tape One!’s influences, it’s brevity and its allegiance to a certain deconstructive sensibility reflects a departure for an artist who has primarily staked their claim within the experimental lo-fi pop idiom.

Take the third track, “All Over the Map” - a languid, reflective, hypercolour feel. A sequence of layered by-the-fire keys and guitar gives way in no short order to a tribal spine of congas, pulsating, synth bass, a caterwaul of gospel and insightful vocals that conjure Black Milk and Contour. Standing beside these, the usual suspects are all present, if somewhat abstractedly. "Vapour feat. Chinedu" and 'Wando Flip feat. Ryan Hawaii' mark a departure from the sensibility of pop and instead are the fitting progeny to MIKE, The Alchemist and Earl Sweatshirt.

Nu Garçon is slowly developing a reputation as a burgeoning experimental pop luminary, but their deep affinity for the post ambient and rap idiom of the latter twentieth century rings clear throughout Tape One!
More so than any Nu Garçon release to date, Tape One! is a collection guided by and dedicated to their attention to song curation. Written and recorded during a period of insomnia (and the attendant desire to produce a kind of therapeutic, self soothing, home-body music) to assist them around their nighttime routine, Nu Garçon weaves an alchemical suite of fractal ambient, soft kinetic radiance, and hyperstitial electronica, creating and holding space in between the aforementioned tracks. Tape One!'s final third is, arguably, it's most emotive and cathartic. Tracks fourteen and sixteen, “One Night” and “Brother (for G)” form a diptych, shared in whole by the lustral and anthemic poetry originally penned by the late Gboyega Odubanjo - his revolutionary spirit breathed into life through lilting, recursive atmospheres.

The ending refrain of “Let Me Go” serves like something close to a call to action — “you’re letting go // now let me go.” In an attempt to beat back ego, over thinking, language itself, Nu Garçon arrives at an axiom that feels so true and familiar, you’d swear you’d heard it one hundred times before. "Tape One! is a sonic odyssey," Nu Garçon shares. "It's an exploration of uncharted territories, a mosaic of emotions and sounds that reflect the depth of my creative journey. It's not just a mixtape; it's an experience, an invitation to embrace the unexpected."

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