Fiendsh is a producer from Bangkok who has been releasing music since 2014. In 2016, he released his first full-length album, To the End, on Cold Busted. Since that time, he had been relatively quiet, but he is now finally back with a brand new album, Hayashi Reborn.

Hayashi is a Japanese word that literally translates to “woods,” but it is often used to connote the group of instrumentalists that accompany Noh theater. In this sense, Fiendsh is imagining this album to be the music accompanying his own life story so far. In a more practical sense, the album opens up with some gorgeous, dreamy boom bap in “Astronaut,” hitting you with these really sharp snare hits and beautiful strings and horns. Now, if you were only to listen to the first couple of tracks, you might think that you had Fiendsh all figured out, that this album was just going to be full of some pretty downtempo beats. This would be a mistake, though, because the longer you stick with the album, the more Fiendsh is subverting your expectations and taking some really interesting zigs and zags with the album. It could be as subtle as the inclusion of vocals by Puddie and GENTA on “Jun Satori” and “Why I Care,” respectively, where the voices are just being employed as melodic instruments with no lyrics. It could be the way that the album sometimes veers into trip hop, or other times into unique blends of different cultural references and instrumentations. Nowhere does it get more interesting, though, than on “Lucid S Dreaming,” a song that starts off as this beautiful downtempo track, only to very purposefully and deliberately deteriorate as the elements separate from each other until you’re left with this intoxicating-yet-simple synth bass line that will not only hold your attention, but have you wondering, “Wait a second, how did we get here?”

Hyashi Reborn took a minute to get here, but Fiendsh took his time to get everything right with this album. It’s a beautiful instrumental album that is very inviting, only for Fiendsh to find all of these interesting ways with his songwriting and arranging to give the album a lot of depth and keep his listeners on their toes.