After several years of independently producing instrumental electronic music, New Jersey-based musician Chuck Sutton made an explosive entrance to experimental vocal pop with his debut album, “i know what i’m doing*” that was released on Friday.
From 2014-18, Sutton made and released instrumental electronic tracks every few months and began releasing YouTube videos about his music production process in 2017.
In October 2018, Sutton planned to release a five-track EP, but decided to start saving songs for an album when he made his best track yet, “Rosetta,” which he later released as the second single for “i know what i’m doing*.”
“It kind of overshadowed the quality of the rest of the songs,” Sutton said in an interview over a Discord video call. “It was bittersweet.”
As he recorded more songs for his debut album, each one revealed more and more of the album’s complete meaning.
Before finishing the album in February, Sutton got a shoutout from influential music critic Anthony Fantano, seeing that he had an extra 40,000 plays on SoundCloud the day after Fantano’s YouTube video went live.
“I’ve never seen that kind of spike,” Sutton said.
Sutton’s new album features plenty of the futuristic embellishments Fantano praised, powerfully delivered through pop song structures that explore many different aesthetics.
Sutton said that each of the album’s nine songs tied together with seven skits and interludes, explore a slightly different genre.
The album’s first single, “Chess Bling,” creates an original take on the mumble rap sound with distorted flutes, 808 bass and equally rhythmic and melodic vocals.
Along with demonstrating his usual production prowess with surprising switch-ups into choruses with jazzy guitar chords or ghostly synths, Sutton also shows his strength as a rapper, delivering tongue-in-cheek bars about saving money and “Zoomin’ off in your dad’s whip.”
Sutton called “Chess Bling” a trap song about materialism and said he enjoys making music that contradicts the conventions of its genre.
“I am using one medium to talk about almost the opposite feeling,” he said.
Sometimes, Sutton’s songs abandon their detached critique to deliver an addictive, unforgettable pop anthem, like the beautiful and haunting “Rosetta.”
After an opening featuring cold synths and growling bass, the track explodes into a bustling trap beat that somehow acts as a perfect foundation for Sutton’s earworm hook.
After detours into an energetic rap verse and distorted talk box vocals that sound ripped straight from a classic Daft Punk song, the track closes with the same hook, ensuring that you’ll be humming the track’s melody for hours after hearing it.
While tracks like “Rosetta” and “Chess Bling” provide refreshing takes on familiar sounds, the album’s deep cuts venture into much more adventurous territory.
Sutton’s heartfelt tribute to nostalgic experiences in college, “133 (Ode To Freshman),” seems to shift between four genres in less than two minutes, beginning with triumphant electronic dance music synth chords, before shifting into dark drums and ominous double bass samples by way of a synth line taken from a G-funk track.
Sutton called the track “downtempo synth-pop,” although he admitted that he really does not know how to describe his own song.
“It’s not a genre, but like, it kind of is,” Sutton said.
One of the first songs Sutton finished for the album, “Homebound//Energy” displays all the best qualities of his previous work rolled into one package.
The song begins with processed vocals over ambient chords, then suddenly drops into a cold-blooded rap verse backed by rattling percussion, grumbling bass and stabs of muffled synths.
As if the dichotomy between these two sections was not enough to set the track apart, Sutton builds the track into an outro which blends soothing jazzy chords with a driving rhythm and dizzying slices of Sutton’s sampled vocals.
Sutton called this hyperactive outro a callback to “older, Chuck Sutton jumpy, vocal-choppy vibes, which I’m happy about.”
Even with all its multifaceted bangers, “i know what i’m doing*” takes less than half an hour to listen to, thanks largely to most of the tracklist containing short interludes that help each track flow into the next.
These interludes often address the subject matter of the next song, like how “The Long Scheme” introduces “Chess Bling’s” themes of materialism by mimicking putting the listener on hold after calling their bank.
The album also loops seamlessly from the last track back to the first, begging listeners to play the whole album again and suggesting a thematic consistency that Sutton does not quite deliver.
Although this loop suggests a cohesive and conceptual album, Sutton’s debut simply functions as a perfect introduction to him as an artist, without much to stay in terms of a unified theme.
When asked if he wants to make music that appeals to the mainstream, Sutton replied that he wants to make his music accessible by blending left-field and traditional sounds.
“I think what fuels me to make music is I love giving people new perspectives,” he said, referring to how he hopes pop-haters can enjoy “Rosetta” and hip-hop-purists can understand “Chess Bling.”
Whether Sutton’s strategy brings him mainstream acclaim or not, he plans on focusing on his music career full-time after recently dropping out from the music production program at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
“If I am in college, I don’t want to be slacking, getting bad grades but then having a good career,” he said.
Sutton said his fellow students joked that he would drop out long before he did and faculty at the university supported his decision.
“It seemed like they were trying to stay as [diplomatic] as possible while also telling me that what I was doing was the right decision for myself and to just go for it,” Sutton said.
Sutton is already saving up material for another album he promised is even better than the songs on “i know what i’m doing*.”
Even if the songs on his next album only come close to the highlights of his debut, you will be missing out on some fantastic, forward-thinking pop music if you don’t start listening to Chuck Sutton now.
