What should the inside Tainy’s head be like?
In there, previous the archive of recollections — all of the awards and reggaeton hits since he started producing as a precocious 14-year-old child in Puerto Rico — it’s simple to image an infinite library of unlikely influences: a tangle of obscure anime movies, cyborg fantasies, old-school hip hop beats, wonderful arts books, random nights in Tokyo. After which even deeper, the place the synapses kind, there appears to be a bottomless abyss that Tainy always pulls from, turning abstractions into refined experiments which have pushed the style, and Latin music, boldly into the long run. It’s probably that a variety of Tainy’s extra advanced, stranger concepts have solely existed on this inside realm, locked and inaccessible from followers —till Information.
The album, Tainy’s first as a solo artist, appears like downloading the deepest contents of the super-producer’s mind and seeing his artistic course of straight in entrance of you. A unfastened idea ties the undertaking collectively: Tainy has invented the story of Sena, a pink-haired android who he brings to life via Information’s beautiful and shocking assortment of lively, amoebic songs. In lesser palms, the strategy might have come off too heady or cerebral, however Tainy has a means of creating nerd shit endlessly cool — and it helps that the tracks listed below are crystalline creations — some club-ready, others filled with intrigue and nostalgia — that push a roster of star artists far exterior their consolation zone.
Nobody does what they’re anticipated to do on Information. The genius of Tainy’s previous work is that it’s a treatise between him and different artists, a gathering level that helps the acts he’s working with obtain what they need on their very own albums. Right here, Tainy can do precisely what he desires up: Sure, that’s Sech on an emo ballad and Arcangel on a bubbly hit that sounds prefer it time-traveled from the Eighties. And sure, he did splice a 4 Tet pattern right into a monitor with Skrillex and Rauw Alejandro. It’s fascinating to consider the album as ideas that swirled in Tainy’s head as he sat within the studio watching his collaborators, imagining wild situations to place them and tucking concepts away for himself. When he’s free to do precisely what he appears like doing, the outcomes are sensible.
Concepts are one factor, however execution is one other — and your entire undertaking reaffirms why Tainy has been a sought-out collaborator for everybody from Dangerous Bunny to Rosalia to Dua Lipa to Shawn Mendes. He’s meticulous and exact, discovering the precise texture for the correct second. His popularity explains Information’s star energy: Dangerous Bunny seems a complete of 3 times, on “Lo Siento BB :/,” plus on the techno-fused “Mojabi Ghost” and on a swaggering verse that ends “Pasiempre.” Daddy Yankee, in the meantime, soars out of retirement for “La Child.” Pop darlings Julieta Venegas and Kany Garcia slide into the combination, talking much more to Tainy’s surprising, mad scientist strategy on the undertaking. However the greatest triumph is that every track feels prefer it’s personal trip, guided by manufacturing that takes dangers. These cuts by no means find yourself the place you suppose they may. Songs like “Si Preguntas Por Mi” are sharp, infused with a touch of longing and an eye fixed towards the long run.
Information was three years within the making, fluctuating over durations of artistic blocks and pauses. All of the whereas, the style Tainy helped steer as a youngster saved ballooning, changing into larger and extra world by the day. A lot of that speaks to Tainy’s preternatural abilities as a producer, however his music does fall right into a market that feels fully oversaturated. Fortunately, his songs really feel like plucked jewels — some shinier than others, however nonetheless beneficial in a market with so few rarities. They’re particular sufficient to carry not simply Sena to life, however to get up an entire style and a world of listeners as properly.
