Album Review: GABUISLOST - all these faces
- Lammbi
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Continuing to yearn amidst all odds, GABUISLOST finally puts all his heart into his well-realized project to date. ‘all these faces’ showcases the refinement in his song-crafting skillset, allowing a lot of the melodies and instrumentation to be filled with a lot of dazzling colors.
GABUISLOST’s overall set of records lingers within the area of loving hard and breaking out hard, bringing along blissful melodies and GABUISLOST’s cooing delivery that gives his fleeting romantics their sticking power, yet doesn’t tend to blow over into territory that captivates long term. But after working through such themes long enough, GABUISLOST decided to bring all of his heart into ‘all these faces’, grappling with being in love, falling out of love, and finding friendly closure - an arc that is commonplace, but GABUISLOST’s keeps it small-scaled and tender in its details that it manages to keep the tone rather winsome.
It does help that the melodies GABUISLOST offers here are his most effective to date, bridging his sweeter R&B singing and assured pop rap tendencies within punchy drum and bass, sharp beats, as well as buzzy synths and bright pianos and acoustics that give a lot of cloudy melody to the otherwise well-composed set of brief yet tuneful cuts. Not always mixed effectively and there are songs that is not as striking as the others, yet there is a refinement and stickiness that GABUISLOST and his features managed to deliver, like the cute touches of backing vocals and guitars on the lilting coos of ‘smile’, the buzzy synth lines and glistening pianos that gives GABUISLOST and 2bagBreezo’s performance to shine through on ‘RUSH!’, the gliding drum and bass across ‘likeadrug’ before the bass swallows everything up at the end of the song, the textured percussion and swells of fizzing synths on ‘PUNCTURE WOUND’, the booming bass that flickers around GABUISLOST, ghostsocial, and Ivory Resmus’ solid verses on ‘DAMAGE’ before closing off with rattling grimy drums, and the mellow vocal harmonies that are perched upon quaint pianos and immense bass notes on ‘your friend’.
‘all these faces’ showcases the potent amounts of growth for GABUISLOST, wherein he brings all of his familiar yearning from past records with melodies and instrumentation that cuts through a lot more than it doesn’t, eventually bringing along some of his striking tracks to date. It may still step through usual bedroom pop and indietronica-laden soundscapes that he could still experiment upon in the future, but the sharpening of his compositional, vocal, and production instincts is a good step toward getting himself to a sonic palette that he’ll call his own. With these faces now unveiling all of his expressions, it exposes the heartfelt side that lies underneath GABUISLOST’s starry-eyed emotions.
Favorite Tracks: ‘smile’, ‘RUSH!’ ft. 2bagBreezo, ‘likeadrug’, ‘PUNCTURE WOUND’, ‘DAMAGE’ ft. ghostsocial & Ivory Rasmus, ‘your wound’
Least Favorite Track: ‘FOOL FOR YOU’ ft. lizzy’s personal army