Cloudchord is a producer/guitarist from Austin who has been releasing music since the mid-2010s. In that time, he’s worked with artists like ProbCause and Emancipator, and he’s been on labels like Chillhop and Loci, just to name a few. His most recent release came in September of last year, when he released an EP called Sundrop. Now he’s back with a full-length album, Bloom Bap.

Bloom Bap is an easy album to listen to, but it’s far from an easy task to pull of an album like this. That’s because while Cloudchord is a talented guitarist and producer, making downtempo instrumental hip hop with lot of guitar melodies can easily veer off into noodling elevator music if you’re not careful. Fortunately for us, Cloudchord is extremely careful, and he’s not content just to throw on some generic grooves and just solo endlessly for forty-five minutes. Instead, he’s giving us a lot of different looks, from disco to boom bap to R&B, and he’s bringing in a nice variety of guests to round out the album and take the music in interesting directions. That roster includes Emancipator, Big Gigantic, Birocratic, Koresma, Dominic Lalli, Braxton Cook, ProbCause, Adam Deitch, Janet Guenther, Balkan Bump, Ian Ewing, and Chantel Mead. That’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen, but Cloudchord is experienced and confident enough in his own abilities at this point that he’s able to provide a steady hand and vision for the album, and just put each artist in the best position to shine, whether that be as a rapper or instrumentalist or vocalist. More than anything, though, it’s Cloudchord’s faith in his own musicianship and doing to work over the years to perfect his sound that makes this album work. Because of that, we get an album that takes a little bit of Tommy Guerrero and then mixes in some smooth R&B, a little bit of disco and funk, and then serves everything up chilled.

Bloom Bap is not an easy feat by any stretch of the imagination. It could have sounded generic, cheesy, or both in lesser hands. Fortunately, Cloudchord has been steadily working on figuring out and perfecting his style, and the result is an album that is really fun and soulful, with a lot of variety and plenty of catchy moments that will stick with you.