Written by Louis Pelingen
Sometimes, it takes a while for an act to put out their debut record.
Case in point, King Puentesmina – also known as crwn – has been a veteran within the local music scene. He is known not just for his ability as a drummer of SOS, but also as a producer and songwriter in his own right. Building up his portfolio under the crwn alias since 2013, carving his identity as a producer whose ability towards crafting beats with soulful textures and enough melodic space for everyone willing to swing by and contribute their vocals on his well-crafted instrumentals. This allowed him to collaborate with numerous artists throughout the years, which only allowed him to expand his open space in creating beats that slot within other genres and is an opportunity to continue refining his skill as a producer – improving upon the textures and the melodies that he has shaped. Since then, he has gotten more acclaim and recognition as a producer, and his production credits have only gotten bigger and bigger, yet it will take a while for a debut album to eventually manifest, up until this year.
Séance is the long-awaited debut album that crwn has been working on for 5 years ever since he put out his Orchid beat tape back in 2018, pulling together an assortment of flavorful instrumentals with a full stack of collaborators pulling up vocal melodies within these diverse dance-ready beats. It’s essentially a project that places crwn as the producer who’s able to bring these old and new collaborators together and nestle them to his crafted beats that showcase how much he has gotten better as a producer for a long time. His attention to texture has only gotten fuller and warmer, his attention to mixing is consistent – never taking the clear scope of the vocals and instrumentation, and his melodic sensibilities have excelled – always making the grooves as sharp as they can get.
Given the feature-heavy element on the album, there is the looming question of how much these collaborators will be able to stick the landing – whether that be the long-familiar collaborators such as Jess Connelly, August Wahh, and Curtismith, or the more recent collaborators such as LONER, Jolianne, and TALA – fortunately, for the most part, they do manage to aim high. Their writing manages to consistently stay within the simple themes of longing romance and their vocal performances do manage to shine within crwn’s production palette, eventually leading to quality spilling forth. The drum and bass splash of ‘Good Enough’ where Jason Dhakal’s silky vocal touch ups works for the frustrated relationship exit that the song aims for, The 80s house tune of ‘Wish It Never Ends’ where Olympia’s hushed delivery creates a romantic allure in the dancefloor – a characteristic that’s clearly reminiscent of Jessie Ware in a positive way, the bouncy groove of ‘Honey’ that has enough striking melody and space for August Wahh to rap and sing about needing that passionate intimacy with an assured confidence, the slow-building electronica of ‘Waiting For You’ with its buzzier synth melodies, shuffling drum patterns, and acoustic strums that overall coalesce for LONER’s longing delivery for the need to communication to connect through, and the emotive, dreamy melodic swells of ‘Dreaming Of You’ from TALA’s soothing vocals and shuffling instrumentation that ramps up to the potent hook does manage to work, especially with the song trying to put a semblance of comfort towards how love heals and changes people.
And while the album is certainly consistently well-produced and put together, it doesn’t always go all the way to the top, mostly due to two things. The small quibbles in certain songs where are certain elements that could’ve been tweaked better: the lyrical flair on ‘Rooftops In Paris’ where Curtismith’s flexing doesn’t carry as much resonance and can be quite disconnected amidst the other songs that touch upon the yearnings or frustrations within relationships, the hook on ‘Another Day’ that can sound quite clunky despite Jolianne’s jumpy vocalisations really giving her all to make it stand out, and the fleeting immediacy of ‘Feel Something’ that could’ve fleshed out a little bit more given how Nadine Lustre’s breathy vocals and the overall melody of the song does come out pretty good. Then there are the big ones that hamper the album back. The shaky momentum where after ‘Wish It Never Ends’, the album structure starts to become more languid, with certain songs such as the pure instrumental ‘Ouroboros’ really putting a dent in the momentum moving forward. But there is also the overall sound that crwn favors to create in the record, full of UK Garage, Drum and Bass, and House elements that he does manage to pull off extremely well, but not exactly in a way that’s remarkable as he could’ve added intriguing ideas within these beats that could allow these already good tracks become spectacular.
But as a debut project that crwn perceives as an updated version of his style of production since Orchid, Séance does deliver in that assessment as his ability in putting together melodies, textures, and genre variations has improved, allowing his collaborators to give really good performances within these collection of instrumentals. At the same time, certain issues does take away the sparking flair that the album mostly has, eventually resulting in the project not as striking as it should’ve been. Despite the waning structure, this séance is still able to successfully communicate to the spirits, letting everybody’s sense of yearning keep on growing deeper.
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