MoMA Ready Ocean Walker II

[Self-Released; 2018]

Rating: 4/5

Styles: liquid d&b, old skool jungle, subway club
Others: Robert Hood, Goldie, Derrick May, Jeff Mills

Below is a video of a people rollerskating, while a person wearing a green shirt dances against the rotation of the rink. This person’s appreciation of others’ movement — passing by — is exactly how I stay listening to MoMA Ready’s newest mixtape, Ocean Walker II:

Ocean Walker II is being late getting off the 42nd 7 train stop and running to some restaurant at 5:15 PM in Times Square. Or gliding through the people at Penn doing spin moves, twirling them if they’re willing: smiles. The pace of samples MoMA Ready slangs — rarely consistent in genre — coalesce with observers’ sublingual-copiousness of pop-up and pass-me-by thoughts, bobbing and weaving with the beat is merely just holding steady into a groove. Without control.

A blend of tenderness and push. I held a person’s hand once I didn’t know while squeezing through people out of a basement in Harlem, and it worked; feeling MoMA Ready’s uplift-style quality and production con jungle-drip is movement transposed. A twitch on-set by a rhythm so harmonized, it’s melody. The succession of belligerent beats entwining some grasp of this chase is an adrenaline rush. Surges as seizures. Ocean Walker II maintains a tight hug around the dance circle, stylized as a thorough mix, but presented by Bandcamp’s track-breakdown as an “official release” or an “album.” Deez nuts like it ain’t cheatin’ on ya mans with the mans in a womans-mans, man-womans vernacular. Pause.

Every morning after and ever again, MoMA Ready presents full-form party. Everyone is smiling because we’re smiling, and everyone accepts the moment because we’re all having fun, while smiling. Hop aboard Ocean Walker II for pure velvet crush, spinning waves, crashing into a non-stop tidal. A Bermuda Triangle of beauty. A perfect blend of reconstructing modern club, cross-genre soul tightly braided with seamless sampling, and carefully-edged album qualities that come off like one of the best mixes to hit radio/podcast/SoundCloud. MoMA Ready is more than just another producer, and Ocean Walker II is in hot pursuit of an evolving new vision on the blends of sound.

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