Namir Blade’s latest album Metropolis is a stunning effort; proving that Blade’s flow and musical compositions are uniquely his own. Aurally, it blends such a stunning myriad of influences it’s hard to comprehend (sci-fi meets string quartet meets break beats meets the intensely personal… see what I mean).
The album evokes many visual elements starting with the anime-esque dystopian cover art but Blade takes it even further with the video for “Mephisto / Deep” – two disparate tracks from the record paired together beautifully here. The video takes a minimum approach with maximum impact. For “Mephisto”, there are three setups: a silhouetted future traveler in a red room, Blade preparing for the day in a Victorian hotel room and cut-ins of a variety of faces lip-sync’ing to the tracks refrain. Written out, it’s not much of a video concept but it works incredibly well. The same goes for “Deep” – Blade set against a cool blue background giving a straight forward performance, as the edits warp and shift him through subtle effects.
Descriptions of music videos don’t do much to entice someone to view them but with Namir Blade, it’s captivating to see how little there is on the page and how magically it manifests. Metropolis is one of those no-brainer records that needs to be in your rotation and, if it isn’t already, you should let “Mephisto / Deep” be your gateway to changing that.