Adil Malik - Deep Abyss
Adil Malik is a music producer whose sounds are capable of taking the world by storm. Today we take a look at his 7-track album, Deep Abyss, which features some of Malik’s excellent production across an 8-D soundscape and featuring collaborations with composers Phenom, Synthferatu, Andy Brookes and BLGN.
Deep Abyss starts with “Dark Abyss - Prologue” which bounces and hits hard, featuring a heavily hip-hop influenced sound that will immediately draw you in. The song’s vocals are heavily produced, giving the vocal approach a very unique and textured sound; I really enjoyed the artistic choices presented in this song as they really set the album up for success. Taking a few cues from “Prologue”, “Dark Abyss - Spirits” smoothly transitions in from “Prologue” and gives off that same table setting high-energy vibe and even expands upon it; this building on the sounds of previous songs continues excellently through the remainder of the album.
“Orion Bleam” follows “Spirits” and serves as a bit of a slowdown compared to the introduction tracks; the song features a more relaxed vibe and seems to borrow a bit of a lo-fi approach to its spacey sound. “Nebula Trap” is the next song and it starts with a tempo similar to that of “Orion Bleam” before exploding with energy at the one minute and twenty-two second mark when the percussion kicks in. “Nebula Trap” capitalizes on the album’s spacey vibes and feels like the birth of a new star, making use of a deep synth bassline that drives the song well; the track also features some music choices that seem oriental in nature, providing additional appealing texture to the song. These first four tracks show off stellar Deep House and Ambient vibes that manage to be beautifully interconnected despite slight genre differences.
“Cosmic Rush” kicks off the third arc of the album and its Triphop vibes bump and groove in an extremely danceable way. In some ways, the synths in this song take a more aggressive approach, still giving off a space vibe but less of a desolate grounded type of vibe and more of a fictionalized idea of space kind of vibe (something akin to a Hollywood renegade version of space) and this slight change reignited the energy we heard from the Deep Abyss’ “Dark Abyss” songs at the beginning of the album. The following song, “Light Glow” plays more like an adventurous space odyssey, with musical phrasing that effortlessly ignites feelings of wonder and curiosity. “Light Glow” also features my favorite melodic choices on the album and I felt fully engaged through its eleven minute and thirty-six second runtime.
The album concludes with the track that shares its name: “Deep Abyss”. “Deep Abyss” features a lot of elements previously heard throughout the album, including some subtle callbacks that are representative of the energy provided by other tracks. Like many of the songs on the album, it takes an ambient approach but features a more enticing backbeat that drives the song. I feel like “Deep Abyss” is the perfect song to end the album off and it highlights many of the excellent aspects of the album that came before it while continuing to drive that sound forward.
Deep Abyss is a project filled with ambition that is massively successful in terms of its sonic presentation. The album as a whole features a lot of spacey vibes which are provided by quite literally stellar synth work and it is through these spacey vibes that senses of wonder, curiosity, exploration and longing are all engaged at different points during the album. Deep Abyss captures the mysterious elegance of space and that unknown abyss many of us long to learn more about - someday, perhaps. Until the day commercial space travel allows us all to experience what is really out there, we will have to thank our stars that we at least can listen to the excellent Deep Abyss and its wonderful vibes. We have Deep Abyss embedded below in its entirety via SoundCloud - take a listen!
