Atlanta’s Flwr Chyld Explores ‘Luv N Chaos’ with Emotional Fluency, Musical Range, and Sepia Tint Reminiscence
Evan Dale // November 10, 2022
Iridescent Love in 2019. Flow in 2020. Both projects introduced the laid-back cool of Flwr Chyld whose productive textures embody the rangy possibilities of making music today, but are somehow inseparable from something more analogue. Something sepia tint, something wood paneled, the Atlanta instrumentalist, producer, and DJ is enigmatic when it comes to both epoch and style. Much of that has to do with his multi-hyphenate approach to music. A bridge between the times and the boundaries of musical genre, he’ll tell you that it’s love you’re hearing. And he’ll tell you that his new project, debut full-length album, Luv N Chaos is his manifestation of how he consumes and subsequently creates love in auditory form, transcendent across sounds and emotions in a way few these days can communicate so naturally.
‘Some of us view the word "love" as a verb because what's more important than the word itself, is the action one puts behind it…. Some of us view it as a feeling, the explainable and unexplainable…. And some of us know what it feels like to be in and out of love. A series of experiences that can take us on a wild ride of emotions that can feel a bit chaotic, causing us to go into an upward or downward spiral…. Somewhat of a rollercoaster ride if you will. Thrilling, frightening, and chilling. Whether it be for better or for worse, it all seems to be worth it, right? This is my ode to love.’
From its very onset, Flwr Chyld’s debut album is a masterclass on artistic coalescence. Only two tracks of the thirteen are without a featuring name from an undeniably wide-ranging list - pulling from soulstress Kadhja Bonet (Outer Body) whose collaborative work kaleidoscopes through the canons of SiR, the Free Nationals, and Anderson .Paak, and stretching to Montreal trio, Planet Giza (Conversations with Saturn) whose stylistic mosaic finds its center at the point where melody-strewn bars meet jazz club beats. And yet, the project at length is able to be seamlessly brought into the textural world that the artist at the center of the its orbit has been hand-crafting and mastering since he first started releasing tracks more than six years ago. Here, the artists that Flwr Chyld has met along the way infuse his project with a depth of soul and emotional mellow so expressly perfect for his sound that one would think his journey was masterplanned. But like all art of its timeless nature, Luv N Chaos is instead a product of the two things that make up its title. Through the trials and tribulations, he’s emerged triumphant in his ability to handcraft a sound that is authentically his, even when weaving in the sounds of so many others.
Such is a prerequisite of modern producers who wish to craft their own worlds instead of only helping traditional fronting artists bring their respective visions to life. Think of KAYTRANADA’s Bubba, Nappyhigh’s prolific canon, or the Free Nationals with their 2019 self-titled debut. All provide the foundation, but also successfully craft a blueprint through which their accompanying vocalists and lyricists experiment with their own sounds. They bring their own texture - their own design - to that foundational blueprint, but all the pieces fit together because of the compositional forces at its center. Flwr Chyld is able to be exactly that guiding hand throughout Luv N Chaos.
His foundation - the one that’s sepia tint and shag rug in its heart, but retrofuturistically trailblazing in its mind - was hand-crafted for every one of the artists involved, including himself. A willing participant in his own designs, Feel Your Love - which doesn’t pull another name into focus - isn’t to be overlooked even amongst so many timelessly capable vocalists and poets doing their own thing. Flwr Chyld brings some understated soul and vulnerable prose to the track in a way that would go unnoticed for anyone listening that’s not paying close enough attention to know that voice on the hook belongs to the man whose fingers are sliding across the keys. That’s some musical range.
Check Out Our 2020 Interview with Flwr Chyld, Here:
But beyond being his own featuring vocalist, the other names involved, too, embody a soul and funk era nuance projected through a modern lens. It’s bold, experimental Neo-Soul at its purest definition. Take Sebastien Mikael whose soulful crooning dances across the emotionally positivist composition of Lucky Me early in the album before returning for a downtempo sultry hook on Today Only Comes Once near the end if Luv N Chaos. Both tracks certainly exude Flwr Child’s promise of love being the driving force of the album, and both certainly allow Sebastien Mikael to test the extent of his register. And yet the former feels like a Summertime, rosé-influenced bike ride with a loved one, while the latter feels particularly more late night and lustful. It’s that emotional breadth that has long made love the greatest thematic force in music. It’s that span of what love means that can be brought out in a listener when the emotion of the music is just right. But few in the modern era seem to explore it with more fluency than Flwr Chyld.
Worth It featuring Ghanain American producer and vocalist, Flozigg, couples the importance of time spent in a relationship with the layered complexity of modern production that can make the outcome feel entirely effortless. In Your Arms, with Demae, bleeds of its title, and rides the emotional simplicity of a thoughtful guitar riff overtop a well-placed drumkit.
Through every track and each of its forty minutes, Luv N Chaos not only explores the boundlessness of style, era, and love as a thematic driver of music, but also how to tie so many influences together across that span of a rangy, well-curated album. Few projects flow better, explore more, and feel downright more authentic than Flwr Chyld’s debut.