▶ discover: @bmore-new-era
There’s a magic in eu-IV’s music. Lo-fi hip-hop is a sea of sample loops, radio noise and fuzzy percussion, with a rapidly increasing amount of people diving in.
Hip-hop’s sample based roots have often attracted criticism from outsiders due to its apparent simplicity and unoriginality, something that has continued on to lo-fi hip-hop from the myriad of genres that music now comprises of in this day and age.
What people have failed to realise since hip-hop’s birth up to today is that in a genre that can pull from other sources as much as hip-hop does creativity and originality are paramount. No other genre has the ability to affect listeners regardless of how much time is invested in a track, whether it’s minimal in its elements or complex. Songs in the genre can be made in minutes from a simple four bar loop, an old hip-hop acapella and a basic mix of kicks, hi-hats and snares, or can take hours and days of carefully utilising effects to create varied soundscapes. What unites the best of the beats is their ability to make your head nod as soon as the drums kick in.
eu-IV’s music lies across the spectrum, but every track is replay worthy, and by that I mean multiple times, so it’s no wonder that his success with dropping loosies on SoundCloud means we’re only now getting full-length projects from him. Released this year, Pearl and Close Your Eyes show two sides to the Baltimore producer’s output. One speaks to his ability to release individual songs, somehow flowing with connections left to the listener. The other shows eu-IV’s focus and ability to craft a unique body of work that spans multiple tracks and threads between them. Both as a whole are greater than the sum of their parts, but for different reasons.
I recently spoke to eu-IV about his musical background, recent releases, working with duzzo dave, his live-streamed performance at Complex’s HQ in New York and more.
Look out for my All eu-IV Mix featuring classics and unreleased material from eu-IV later this week.
