Vapor Eyes is a producer from Chicago who has been carving out his own niche for a while now. His last project, Proxima, came out just a little over a year ago. Now he follows that up with one of his most ambitious projects yet, Where the Dyad Lives.

For those that aren’t familiar with the term, dyad simply means in musical terms the combination of two notes at once. For reference, your typical chord is a triad, or three notes at once. The dyad is the most simple on it’s surface, but is also the building block for all musical composition beyond the unaccompanied melody. Vapor Eyes makes music that might simple at first, because you might recognize a sample here or there, and the grooves in the rhythm feel so natural. Once you take a step back and think about everything that’s happening, though, you realize how complex his music is. He lives is a world equally influenced by hip hop, house, and drum and bass, with a solid foundation in jazz and R&B. The really interesting thing with Vapor Eyes, especially on this record, is that he keeps finding interesting areas in the cracks in between these genres that haven’t been explored in quite this fashion. This isn’t a juke record or anything like that, it’s something else entirely. It feels like Vapor Eyes just took all of his knowledge and trick of the trade that he’s been acquiring over the years, and said, “How do I throw a warehouse party that will get every single person dancing, from the casual music listeners to the deep house fans to the old school hip hop heads?” This is an album that’s meant to be listened to all the way through at once, pumping through your speakers, and definitely not sitting down. This is an album that’s about movement and commonality. It’s an album that tells you to stop standing at the all over in your corner of the room, let’s all get on the dance floor together and celebrate life.

Vapor Eyes has been at this for a while, and Where the Dyad Lives is the culmination of a lot of work from a producer who isn’t content to rest on his laurels. He continues to push and explore and to ignore the boundaries of genre. This is great music with great grooves and all sorts of interesting layers and musical ideas that continue to reveal themselves upon repeat listens.