Neurofire

Editors’ Notes Just three years into releasing tracks, Fade to Mind label head Ezra Rubin rewired the club-music scene—and helped introduce the world to a then-unknown singer named Kelela—with his 2013 single “Bank Head.” Despite his club roots, working with singers like Kelela and DAWN led Kingdom toward a hazier R&B sound on 2017’s Tears in the Club, but with Neurofire he reclaims his signature stark, percussive style. His vocalists are still a crucial part of the equation, but here they’re balanced by tougher beats and oodles of empty space. On “No More Same,” LUVK delivers singsong chants over chilly steel-pan synths and bruising bass; “Arch Slide” erects shuddering Jersey-club architecture around alternating shouts and singing from UNIIQU3 and Tre Oh Fie. Kingdom has always been stylistically voracious, and that’s true here, too: His two songs with g h ø s t (“DS8” and “Yikes”) mix vaporwave, trap, and cloud-rap into eerie, unstable hybrids. And he saves some of his most experimental work for his instrumentals: “Maze” flips chipmunked vocal samples and snippets of acoustic guitar into an experimental take on UK garage that shimmers, miragelike, in midair.