LA-based alt-pop artist Boy Blu has released his debut EP, Eye of Desire.
Former professional dancer turned singer-songwriter Boy Blu is no stranger to physicality, and that comes through in Eye of Desire very well; these beats are for dancing and letting go, equal parts heavy synth and personal confessional.
According to Boy Blu himself: “Eye of Desire came from me trying to understand what it feels like to watch yourself change just to be desired, and the kind of craziness that comes with losing the attention of someone who once saw you that way. The EP is about different attitudes of desire being confidence, desperation, and seduction. It’s raw, experimental, slutty, and it feels like me owning it all instead of running from it.”
A bold project from a self-styled alt-pop provocateur, Eye of Desire is rich in lush electronic textures and vocoder-laden vocals, as well as being a full-fledged fantasy continuation of Boy Blu’s previously-released song, “Platinum Pleasure”, which is also the EP’s second track.
A short and swift six-track, sub-17-minute EP, Eye of Desire doesn’t stick around for a second longer than it needs to, opening up with the hypnotic title track “Eye of Desire” and moving swiftly into “Platinum Pleasure”, the EP definitely starts off both dark and sensuous in tone, a mood that it definitely maintains throughout.
If there’s one thing that can be said about this album, it’s that its pulsating electronic vibe means that one song leads flawlessly into the next, and could almost have been one single extra-long track for how well it all fits together. This is an EP for an alternative club, and it makes no apologies for being exactly that.
A particular highlight is the house-infused “Whiplash”, with its relentlessly driving beat and hazy background speech while Boy Blu sings “whiplash/turning heads when I come around”. You cannot be self conscious while listening to this song, and even in the middle of an EP that is full of dance-pop bangers, “Whiplash” especially demands that the listener dances, whether they get up to do it or not.
Possibly the darkest song on the album is the provocatively-named “Hot Honey”, as Boy Blu sings “I’m so hot/honey/let it drip out your mouth/take it off/honey/baby we can work it out”. Unsurprisingly for an EP named Eye of Desire, every track is fairly explicit and comfortable in being so, but “Hot Honey” is definitely the most explicit, and doesn’t suffer at all for it.
The final track, “Hurricane”, is equally as danceable, but the vibe of it is something sadder and generally more bitter, an ode to a relationship that both ended badly and is sorely missed by Boy Blu, clear in how he sings “I regret you/can’t retrace the steps babe”. Clearly, this one hurt to go through, and hurt even more to write – and it’s a good way to cap off the rest of the album, because if it had been included sooner in the EP the impeccable vibes might not have carried through the same way.
Eye of Desire is a well-rounded, consistent set of tracks, and shows off the promise of what Boy Blu can bring to the table in years to come as he matures as an artist.
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