A CONSTANT CONDENSATION: ALBUM REVIEW
A CONSTANT CONDENSATION is like hearing the inner monologues of someone’s forgotten voice memos over the course of a year. Each song feels so personal yet so distant. It never feels like Amani is presenting anything to us as listeners. Instead, it feels like we are peeking into his world. A CONSTANT CONDENSATION does not try to mask its sadness, pain, or joy. Amani puts his emotions on his sleeve and shows us a complex picture of who he is becoming, both as a person and as an artist.
A CONSTANT CONDENSATION is an album of textured soundscapes written and produced completely by Amani himself. Amani never centers himself in the music, so although his vocals are present on most of the tracks, it feels like he is always rapping to create a broader picture or atmosphere. A CONSTANT CONDENSATION is a project that universalizes Amani’s feelings and spreads his emotions out over time and space. Much of the album focuses on some type of emotional longing, and by allowing the instrumentals to tell the story with him, Amani turns his personal struggles into an overwhelming feeling of longing that echoes across each track on the project.
On many self-produced albums, there’s a clear differentiation between the artist as a producer and as a writer. On A CONSTANT CONDENSATION, Amani’s vocals are completely inseparable from the beats. Often, he allows his voice to be completely drowned out. Other times, he is silent for minutes at a time as the instrumental becomes an extension of his voice. On “Come Through (I Already Did),” he raps over a simple piano loop, but he lends the beat just enough space so that it feels like the beat is speaking just as much as Amani is. As he raps, “Bus drivers don’t look at me when I board the bus,” he pauses to let the beat come in before his next line. There is a constant interplay between Amani and his beats that allow for a complete cohesion of the project.
A CONSTANT CONDENSATION has just as much cohesion emotionally as it does sonically. It is a project about the path to forgiveness and the emotional journey that it takes you on. There are discussions of prayer, love, energy, and power all over this project. As Amani says on “Eons,” “Close your eyes for just one second and your blessing be gone.” This is a project about seeing the world around you as it is: at certain points that means acknowledging collective grief, while at other times it simply means appreciating the beauty of your surroundings.
All of this makes the project a lot to digest. It’s an album that you can keep going back to and seeing in a new light. A great example of this is the five-minute ambient odyssey that closes out the project called “A Royal End.” This entirely instrumental piece moves through the emotional stages of this album. It incorporates jazzy-synth lines, ambient pads, and hip-hop drums to craft an otherworldly atmosphere. “A Royal End” sums up the emotional heft behind this album and highlights the power in what Amani is creating. A CONSTANT CONDENSATION is the type of album built to grow with you.