Juan Cosby is a producer from Cincinnati who has been releasing music for over ten years now. In that time, he’s released a few projects with Spoken Nerd, as well as a string of solo albums, starting with 2017’s Inhospitable Planet. Just this past January, we got a unique collaborative project alongside St. Louis emcee Farout and Cincinnati singer/songwriter Wonky Tonk called ALPENGLOW. Now Cosby is back with a new solo album, Polychrome [Deluxe!].

There are lots of different ways for producers to make solo albums, but Polychrome is a straight up instrumental album from Juan Crosby. Now, what makes the album interesting is that Cosby is eschewing the constraints of doing a downtempo or boom bap album. Instead, he’s bobbing and weaving his way through different styles of hip hop, dance, and experimental electronic music, finding this sweet spot that feels like if you took DJ Shadow, Daft Punk, and Daedelus and put them all in a blender, and then added a heavy dose of old sci-fi film scores for good measure. There’s a certain amount of grandeur and eeriness to the sound of the album, which in turn makes it fun to listen to while you close your eyes and just let your imagination run wild. On top of all this, if you opt for Bandcamp to pick up a copy of this album, you’ll not only get the album, but you’ll get a bonus remix album as well. The remix artists include ECID, AP Counterfeit, Deadbeat Donnie, and Abby Vice. The best thing you can say about the remix album is that you can listen to the original album and then the remix album all the way through and not feel like you’re just listening to the same album twice in a row. Each remix has a distinctly different flavor that opens up the soundscape of the original album.

Polychrome [Deluxe!] is great addition to Juan Cosby’s discography. It’s creative, with its own unique sound, and the album really comes together as greater than the sum of its parts. Add to that an excellent remix album to boot, and you’ve got quite the package of compelling instrumental music.