Blay Vision - The Vision 2 (2017)

It's been a busy year for Tottenham MC and producer Blay Vision, who has released a whopping fifty tracks in 2017. “The Vision 2” LP on Lit City Trax contains a collection of twenty-two previously unreleased instrumental productions. The sequel to last year's beat tape "The Vision", "The Vision 2" demonstrates Blay Vision’s is a force for the UK scene to reckon with.

The young musician released his debut album Turner Avenue through J-Cush's prestigious Lit City Trax label earlier this year, and its Jme-featuring single "Gone Mad" swiftly racked up over a million streams. Several of the tracks on The Vision 2 are instrumental versions of album tracks, and include "My Gs," "Fully Involved," "99 Pace," "Halloumi Time," and "Amnesia." His two beats used by President T, "Been On Alert" and "Mind Your Business," also make the cut.

Others, however, are completely unheard productions, and a refreshing departure from his signature sound. "Inside", for example, is a minimal 123BPM house song, while the silky "Dreamdate" sounds like it could be a Terrorhythm label cut. The jittery vocal cuts on "Monroe" make for a haunting soundtrack, and the cinematic "A Beautiful Fantasy" is apparently a personal favourite of Blay's.

Blay Vision started MCing during secondary school, soon realising that the best way to secure instrumentals to vocal was to build them himself which led him to download FL Studio where his obsession with production began. An avid gamer, his music draws heavy cues from the 8-bit chiptunes of vintage gaming consoles like Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, this is the biggest influence on his sound. His love for gaming music lead him to an interest in most things Japanese where the roots of gaming and most gaming music programmers reside. This record is Sonic the Hedgehog soundtracked by Zaytoven’s most suitable English counterpart.

A master of simplicity and an expert in space and balance, Blay Vision’s productions draw heavily from the classic grime sound palette; staccato strings, orchestral stabs, square wave leads and skippy hi-hats which he punctuates with hyper-tuned 808s that give his tracks a tough bounce that would make any listener screw their face up with excitement and amaze. Blay Vision is nothing like the rest.

Putting it simply “The Vision” is the first organised insight into Blay Vision’s cinematic compositions. Once and for all, it can be understood that Blay Vision is an artist ready to take things to a new level. Not limited to one tempo, tracks like “Gone Mad” would send any trap wild while “Never Cared” could easily be a ballad on a Drake album. An artist whose music has transcended any simple genre classifications, Blay Vision’s original styles continually take his sound to new territories.