There’s not a whole lot of extraneous information floating out there on Bay Area beat maker B.Lewis, but that just means that a release like A Lion’s Aperture will have to speak for itself. Fortunately, this album has plenty to say, even though it’s instrumental.

The first thing that will hit you about A Lion’s Aperture is how enveloping B.Lewis’s music is. I strongly encourage you to listen to it by yourself on headphones, so you can really lose yourself in the listening experience. B.Lewis produces tracks that gently surround you from all sides, often swelling and building so subtly that you don’t realize it until you’re already there. It’s difficult to describe how Lewis sets himself apart from the rest of the pack, since he’s using the same toolset that most producers use, in terms of cutting up soul and R&B samples and flourishing them with layers of synthesizers and drum machines. It’s a case of a subtle changes in approach that add up into a style that sounds just a little different than most of his contemporaries. Granted, it’s not that far away from everybody else, just enough that B.Lewis sounds distinct. I think the best case study is the title track. The opening of the song, with the repeated use of a vocal sample singing, “We don’t know each other well,” and building pulse of drums sounds like it could be beginning to a house song, but then as it builds to a break, a tense and eerie down tempo synthesizer line comes in, creating a really interesting contrast as it begins to find a groove as a downtempo track. However, it never really settles in, as B.Lewis kicks in the hyphy beat, taking the rug out from under the listener. It all comes together and works incredibly well, but in an unexpected way.

B.Lewis has no shortage of ideas, and a really distinct voice, which is hard to accomplish when making instrumental hip hop. A Lion’s Aperture puts all sorts of twists on old formulas.