Lee Bannon is an up-and-coming producer from Sacramento. His time seems to be approaching, as his upcoming album, Fantastic Plastic, promises appearances from Inspectah Deck, Del the Funky Homosapien, and yU. Before that, though, we get Gnarlon Bando’s Might Noir, an instrumental album intended to serve as a soundtrack to a fictional film.

The album opens with a mysterious short and cryptic phone call, between a man and woman who arrange to meet. This segues into a down tempo track, with a dreamlike quality provided by a combination of strings and keyboards swirling together. It conveys a certain amount of loneliness and aimlessness that effectively communicates the wandering anti-hero we might associate with a noir tale. However, from here I can’t say that we get a lot of variety in style or changes in mood or tempo that might convey the story of this fictional film. The lone exception to this complaint would be “Arcade scene,” a frantic track with the repeated vocal refrain of “Don’t stop the music!” That said, the song never really develops or conveys anything beyond this one piece of conflict. Tracks such as “The chase!” and “shoot out” don’t particularly communicate these titles with the music, instead relying on sound effects of motors revving. Putting these soundtrack issues aside, how does the album play out as just a normal instrumental hip hop album? Unfortunately, it’s not that special. There are a few tracks that are promising, such as the aforementioned “Nightshift part 2” that opens the album, and the soulful sorrow of “the end/credits,” but the majority of the album just lives in the middle. It’s not bad, but it’s not especially memorable or moving.

A fictional film score is an interesting idea on paper, but it’s much harder to pull off in practice. You have to be able to tell the story of a film that doesn’t exist, and you have to make an album that is also an engaging listen. Lee Bannon didn’t really accomplish either task well with Gnarlon Bando’s Midnight Noir, instead giving us a mediocre instrumental hip hop album.