REVIEW: EP 2 – After

Imagine the year is 2007. The air is crisp but warm, and you are walking home in the afternoon. You can feel the sun touching your skin as you admire the fall foliage. You specifically took this way home because you love the way the sun pokes through the trees. It gives you hope for the future and brings a sense of clarity to the confusion of life. After all, there isn’t a better place to yearn than walking on a quiet, tree-lined street. 

When you get home, you log onto the family computer and click on this new website, YouTube. After surfing around a little, you search for a song your classmate told you about in fourth period. You click on After’s “Deep Diving” music video and are blown away by their refreshing sound. Their sound feels fresh, but familiar, like rediscovering a part of yourself you didn’t even realize you lost. You immediately call your friend to thank them for introducing you to this song and make plans to meet up at the local coffee shop to study. You download After EP 2 to your iPod, put on your headphones, and walk down the same tree-lined street, thinking about how different life will be in a year. 

This is what listening to After’s new EP feels like. With an undeniable trip-hop influence, LA-based pop duo After evokes a feeling of nostalgia. Nowadays, many artists are chasing the hopeful feeling that music had in the 2000s, but fall short because they sound too manufactured or focus solely on creating viral TikTok soundbites. After has successfully captured this feeling of simpler times, tapping into the sincerity and optimism for that lost era, while also providing something new and refreshing. Each song sounds cinematic, like it belongs in the end credits of a 2000s sitcom. 

Trip hop is a genre that emerged in the late 80s and early 90s, focusing on slow tempos, sampled beats, and moody electronics. Some of the key pioneers of this genre include Massive Attack and Portishead. Focusing on atmospheric ambience, After hones in on traditional trip-hop elements to create something authentic and fresh.

As said best on After’s Bandcamp, listening to this EP makes you feel like you have heard it before in a dream (even though it just came out last week). It is the perfect soundtrack to the frutiger aero graphic design aesthetic. Something about it makes you want to crawl through the computer screen and run through a lush field of grass under a vibrant blue sky. It feels like the future we were promised. 

If you are yearning for a simpler time, but still want to try something new, you should give After EP 2 a listen.