Chris Keys is a producer from Oakland, best known for working with such artists as Georgia Anne Muldrow, Declaime, and Quelle Chris. His last solo effort came just this past May, when he dropped a short project called Balance. Now he comes back with a much bigger release, Detour.

Instrumental producer releases are a tricky field to navigate, and Detour is no exception. It walks the line between full length album and beat tape, with twenty-eight tracks in the one to two-minute range, all coming together to provide a full listening experience. Tracks are a little more developed than your usual beat tape, but not fully formed songs that would necessarily stand apart on their own. It’s more about the interplay between tracks, the ebb and flow that unfolds the more you listen to it. Overall, Keys does a good job of providing enough variety in style and letting things build over the course of a few tracks to draw you in as a listener, as opposed to the more typical instrumental release that might fall into the rut of downtempo monotony. The project is just a touch on the long side, and it’s lacking a “wow” moment, but the flipside is that Keys is able to work subtly across the album to finesse a listening experience that will really grow on you, as he moves from classic boom bap to Latin rhythms to downtempo and beyond with his beats. It’s a release that works best on headphones, especially if you’re able to walk around and let the music work as your own personal soundtrack.

Detour won’t blow you away at first, but Keys is savvy enough at this point in his career to create something more understated, that will then continue to grow on you the more time you spend with it. It’s the work of a veteran producer who knows the ins and outs of making some interesting instrumental hip hop.