by Dan O
Sunmundi has a real debut album coming out on 02/28/2023 called Midnight Oil. Loosies get posted pretty regularly and as NY avante garde as Sunmundi is the impact of vocal delivery is no joke. As a primer for Midnight Oil I bought all the loosies I could find and ordered them in my own collection called Album Closers because every Sunmundi song feels like it could be the album closer. It’s the muscle in tone, you can feel spittle flying and when you pick apart the lines you can’t help but think…I really would have left after that like George Costanza on the right joke. Here is my sequence and reasoning so you can cop and build it like mine or build your own Sunmundi project!
1. Exodia f. Big Flowers produced by Animist
I love this beat so much. I needed to start off the album in a way that grabs your attention. Exodia sets the pace for piano keys that drip with emotional resonance (a theme of production in the world of Sunmundi) Big Flowers slides in as a perfect guest for this world, name checking back up centers and warning us against emojis on tombstones. It’s not a banger to start off but in the world of personal rap songs, it kind of is…
https://sunmundi.bandcamp.com/track/exodia-ft-big-flowers-prod-animist
2. Tribute Gardens produced by Sherm
This was almost the closer of the album. I love that it starts with a big all-fingers-pounding of the keys. It’s stitched together collage of images to mull over “Think real, think fake make it up make em swim in a tank.” “From here to profane I wrote propane” “Bread from a grain, the gray matter gives thanks.” Inside two minutes this is still one of my favorite Sunmundi performances and you need it right after the collaboration, it builds the piano theme and gives a full showcase of how Sunmundi’s mind moves from place to place.
https://sunmundi.bandcamp.com/track/tribute-gardens-prod-sherm
3. Me and My Glitch produced by Sasco
Sasco and Sunmundi do real well together. Obviously, this is a play on Biggie’s song Me and My B_ and the flip is dope. Sasco built a tiny quiet refrain at the back end of the loop where the song freezes. A real glitch that isn’t wearing a sign stating “SEE I MADE AN ODD THING” but it’s there. The chorus feeds the theme carried through by the beat. It’s so unified and catchy in a way it shouldn’t be. These three songs need to lock you in for the ride. This is the earwig track.
https://sunmundi.bandcamp.com/track/me-and-my-glitch-prod-sasco
4. Choukin produced by Ojomot
All that mood building piano needs a challenge. This beat is crunchy and dark, this is the song that plays as the killer walks up on the victim. “Bittersweet and strong, you can sleep when your gone.” Our narrator drives the grit home in a way a lot of avante garde artists can’t convincingly do. This is a song that shows you another side and you need that after we build a certain character of song in the first three tracks.
https://sunmundi.bandcamp.com/track/choukin-prod-ojomot
5. Vidette produced by SPKRHED
This is funky @$$ 70’s car chase music. The horns wriggle then punch. Sunmundi gets louder, saying things you need to be loud for like “SOMETIMES THE WRONG TURN CAN PAINT THE RIGHT DIRECTION!” We’ve established our narrator can get personal, can be evocative. This song is a call to arms. If you are feeling it by the end you will notice you’ve tensed up, then 2:35 in the beat releases and Sunmundi seeks equilibrium until the outro washes us all away. This is our cinematic midpoint.
https://sunmundi.bandcamp.com/track/vidette-prod-spkrhed
6. The Man and The Fly produced by Sasco
I needed a song to continue our cinematic phase. Sasco is weaving glitches again, scrunching up sounds then letting them stretch. I love the collage rhyming approach but having a song like this that is a single story carried out with pacing and tension really anchors an album. Album Closers needs to give you all the dimension in acts and the audience, by this point, is starting to grasp what they are dealing with.
https://sunmundi.bandcamp.com/track/the-man-and-the-fly-prod-sasco
7. Gloria Mundi produced by Zopeh Belafonte
I really like the rhyme pattern on this, feels like a burst pattern that always holds your attention. Love the bass driving this the production is Jazzy but not cute Jazzy. Gloria Mundi feels short but you catch some ILL bars when you run it back. This is an album cut that rewards.
https://sunmundi.bandcamp.com/track/gloria-mundi-prod-zopeh-belafonte
8. Arjuna produced by Zopeh Belafonte
Gloria Mundi and this song are part of a two pack called N/A Gods and I just couldn’t break them up. Both twisted haunting Jazz tracks where Sunmundi does some RAPPING RAPPING like “Sketch a Rembrandt, even on slow jams they gon’ reign for a lifespan.” This is an album that gets personal, literary but also has some real battle rap bars gluing it together.
https://sunmundi.bandcamp.com/track/arjuna-prod-zopeh-belafonte
9. Lifed produced by bloomcycle
This is the first horn based Jazzy rap song with Trap like cadence. You can hear it bop, hear hand claps behind it. I had to end with the song where he says “I write it all till there’s nothing left,” it just makes too much sense. This song has a dope little outro to it, it feels like the end of something but you wish it had more to it as well. It leaves you longing a bit and that’s how I want you. So you are ready for Midnight Oil on 02/28/2023.
Freemusicempire 
Leave a Reply