A few weeks ago, I was simply scrolling through TikTok when I found a snippet of a song, “Abyss.”
I immediately was able to pull parallels to the likes of Tyler, The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt with both the video itself and especially the soundscape of the track. I first thought that the song sounded a lot like something off of Tyler’s album, “Wolf.”
With this, I fell in love with the snippet, eagerly waiting for the full track, as well as the album, to drop. Days later, I was once again scrolling through Tiktok. I found yet another snippet from detahjae’s upcoming album. This snippet was titled “Janice.” Yet again, I was able to relate it to Tyler, The Creator and his grammy-winning album, “IGOR.”
With all of these comparisons being made, I was more than excited to hear what the entire album had to bring to the table. Finally, weeks after hearing the initial snippet, the album, “Lone, Borealis,” was released.
As expected, I found myself enjoying the full tracks that the snippets hailed from. These tracks being both “Abyss” and “Janice,” which were both mentioned before. To add on, I thoroughly enjoyed “Equinox, á le train” as well as “Girl-Friend.”
As for “Abyss” it included a synth-filled instrumental along with detahjae filling his bars with witty lyrics and unlimited references. Seriously. If you were to look on Genuis’s annotations of the track, practically every line is highlighted.
“Janice” is your typical love song. I adore the production as well as the vocals from detahjae and MARKTWOO throughout the track. I enjoy the lovey-dovey nature of the second verse, which contains detahjae saying that he wishes to hold hands and take silly pictures with Janice.
“Equinox, á le train” is very similar to Tyler, The Creator’s “Jamba” off of “Wolf.” This comes from both the production and even detahjae’s flow. It’s just different enough to become its own track and be memorable despite being similar to other tracks.
Lastly, “Girl-Friend” shows off detahjae dealing with his feelings in regards to his friend, who isn’t Janice *gasp*, and how he wants to pursue a romantic relationship with them. Yet again, there’s not a huge reason as to why, but I enjoy detahjae’s performance quite a bit on this track. While these are stand-outs for me, the entire track list is nothing short of great.
As I partially said before, I genuinely enjoyed the production heard throughout the album. If you’ve read my review on Tyler, The Creator’s “Wolf,” then a lot of that applies to the production seen here. My favorite instrumentals are from “Thought That We Were Just Friends,” “Equinox, á le train,” and “Beans.”
“Thought That We Were Just Friends” sticks out to me because the track itself is very fun sonically. As detahjae finishes each of his verses, the instrumental cuts out and a drum sequence starts playing, which for whatever reason, I adore. I often enjoy whenever artists stop talking and let the instrumental do the talking as detahjae does here.
As I said prior, “Equinox, á le train,” has similarities to “Jamba” off of Wolf. This is because of the raunchy instrumental that is quickly made known to the listener. Yet again, if you’ve read my “Wolf” review, you’d know that I love “Jamba.” With that being said, it’s no surprise that I enjoy this track as well.
Finally, we have “Beans.” This track cranks up the “raunchiness” tenfold. With the “out-there” synths, the track can honestly be annoying to some listeners, but I love annoying. The track does opt in for a piano in some areas to calm down the overall tone of the track. It’s a nice counterpoint to the usual sound of the song.
Overall, the production here, while it does lack originality, is great anyways.
In the first weekend of “Lone, Borealis” being released, I’ve already listened to the album at least ten times, if not more. With that being said, the album is infinitely replayable. When thinking why this is, I blame the story that we see throughout the record.
This story is detahjae’s journey to Lone, Borealis, the happiest place on Earth…which isn’t even on Earth. It’s on one of Saturn’s moons, Titan. Anyways, throughout this journey, we have dialogue between detahjae and Sal, detahjae’s robotic companion. This just helps the world-building of the album as well as giving the album as a whole some characteristics beyond the actual music. Between the short tracklist, which is only 15 tracks, the story, and the overall sound, I found myself coming back to the record a lot.
With everything being said, I think this album is great. The big thing that is holding the record back is the fact that it’s similar to Tyler, The Creator and a few of his songs. While this isn’t a bad thing in this case, the songs that were entirely original were amazing, proving that detahjae can stay in his own lane and still succeed.
In his next album, whenever it comes out, I’d like to see more original tracks from him just to see what he can truly do on his own.
Despite my complaint, this album is still an 8 out of 10.