Writing about music can be a befuddling task sometimes. Every once in a while, an album comes along for which it’s unimaginably difficult to find the right words to adequately treat it with the reverence it deserves. For me, Halogenix’s Passions is one of those albums.
As a longtime fan of Halogenix, I was ecstatic when he announced Passions to be released on his label Gemini Gemini earlier in February of this year, along with the first single ‘I Told Ya.’ This one song, with its beautifully atmospheric synths and R&B-inspired vocals, captures the essence of what Passions is all about. Track titles like ‘Reverie,’ lyrics like “You satisfy my soul,” and even cover art drawn by his two-year-old son all hint to the meaning of Passions being quite literal in its name. This is not a high-octane, jump-up kind of experience. The album flows modestly from track to track with no real sense of urgency, as if each song is a singular movement in one unified orchestral piece.
In a more literal sense, it seems that Halogenix himself was not in an urgent rush to put his debut album out to the world. In a KoolFM broadcast of all original tracks last Summer, he gives listeners a sense of his selection process, saying “Sometimes the vibe is right, but the overall sound is not.” I’m not sure if “perfectionist” is the most apt word to describe this approach, but goddamn is the man meticulously precise when it comes to setting a consistent mood. That we ended up with 13 tracks that made the cut, so to speak, is quite frankly a miracle.
The instrumentation of Passions as a whole doesn’t deviate far from the jazzy, soulful aura that fans have come to expect from Halogenix, but nor does it at any point begin to sound banal or repetitive. From the slowed-down, reverberant intro of ‘Keeping You Close’ to the playfully upbeat melodies of ‘No More’ and ‘Soldout,’ Passions is riddled with some of the most harmonious and intricate production we’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing from Halogenix. This album is absolutely one to listen through start to finish. My words may not do this project justice, but I promise you that those 13 tracks will.
– BG
