Tulsa native, and LA transplant, Bryon Crenshaw is The Growth Eternal, a sound experiment that combines funk, R’nB, and post-punk motifs into minute-long catchy, pop-vignettes, which meditate on themes of loneliness and inward struggle. Content-wise, a lot of this is going to be familiar to fans of Drake and the Weeknd. Melody-wise, the early releases from neo-soul artists like Nick Hakim, especially Green Twins, are a pretty good guide. Kensho ! is Bryon’s follow-up EP to last year’s Bass Tone Paintings. Both releases are stamped with a heavy bass presence that reveals its self through downtempo grooves a la Thundercat, as well as a daydreaming affect that is micro-dosed with a half-tab of melancholy and dab of anxious desire. Another very surprising quality of this release is Bryon’s penchant to play around with a vocoder, which will remind you of Laurie Anderson more often than it doesn’t. “Shaving Cream LSD” is a somewhat humorous reflection on the isolation of quarantine that sounds a little like Bootsy drown in Nyquil. “Bull Frog’s Croon: i. Night Fishing” is a watery slurp of angular R’nB. “Weak” is a hypnogogic roil of ‘90s radio R’nB, melted and pressed into an unrecognizable shape. My favorite track though, is the apprehensive, prickle pop and tongue-tied tumble of "Contact High," which sounds like Bryon is trying to get up the nerve to say something but he's too nervous and his mouth literally can't form the words, and so the thoughts in his head dissolve in the saliva pools behind the vault of his teeth like sour-apple flavored candy. Honestly, who hasn't been there? I really like how much emotion Bryon is able to pack into each of these bite-sized sonic soap operas. Kensho ! is another suburb addition to this artist's catalog.
