A Path of Awesome in His Wake

It’s always great to see musicians go out on a limb and try something new. It’s even better to see them succeed. Wake’s second EP, The Fifth Finger, brings a refreshingly electronic veneer to hip-hop, or a refreshingly hip-hop veneer to electronic music, depending on which way you look at it. The five tracks contained within may be short, but each of them pack a stylistic punch as we see Wake establish his footing as an artist.

Upon first impression, The Fifth Finger has digital gangster written all over it. The groovy operator synth and hip-hop drum loops found on “ButtaBump” do well to complement to distant and indistinct chopped-up lyrics as the song becomes progressively more glitch-hop.

The lo-fi, fat square waves found throughout “Sunday at Gunpoint” make for a thuggishly smooth glitch-hop instrumental track. “Violently,” the only song with non-edited, albeit highly vocoded vocals, is a toe tapping, head bobbin, gem of a jam. “Squarefunk” aptly closes the album with big and heavy blocks of synth thrown at the listener beside the kick/snare rhythm before breaking down into glitchy patterns and finally a slo-mo loop of a crescendo.

Wake certainly makes a splash with the array of beats found on The Fifth Finger. Songs seems a little sparse and could be fleshed out a bit more than their 2:30 median runtime. With that in mind, this EP serves as a bit of a teaser until we see more from this artist. For anyone who is bored with the standard EDM archetype and wants to bear something a bit outside the box, give The Fifth Finger a listen.