Audio Games is a young producer from New York, and this EP is his solo debut. For the endeavor he enlisted the help of emcees Zero Star, Kidd Steve, 2 Dash Tone, Bee West, and guitarist John Martens.

While I can’t say there’s any one thing that stands out about this EP, there’s nothing I dislike about it. Games demonstrates an ear for reworking soul samples, and the two instrumental tracks work stand on their own as singles. The opening track features a nice sample of Daniel Stern’s rant about records from the movie Diner, which makes me wonder why I haven’t heard this before, because it works so well in this context. What makes the EP a success is that there is clearly passion and joy coming though in the music, along with solid musicianship. Each song has a natural groove to it, and each emcee fits well with the beats they were paired with. “Good Morning,” featuring Zero Star, feels warm and natural like a cup of coffee in the morning, and it puts me in a nice mood to face the day. Outside of Zero Star, I’m not familiar with the rest of the artists working on this EP, but they all show enough talent here that I’ll be keeping an eye out for them.

Keep My Records didn’t blow me away upon first listen, but I did warm up to it. As I kept coming back to it, I found myself liking it more and more. I think Audio Games has a lot of potential, and I’ll be excited to see what he does in the future.