Nickodemus is a New York producer and deejay who has been making music in some form or fashion for about twenty years now. In the six years since his last album, Moon People, Nickodemus continued to travel, explore, and collaborate, always expanding his sound. The results are in the music of A Long Engagement.

One of the major things that becomes apparent as you listen to this album is that Nickodemus is a deejay, and he’s performed live often over the course of his career. I say that because this album has a ton of “live” energy to it, and because Nickodemus always keeps the beats pumping and makes the transitions between songs seamless. Really, the experience of listening to A Long Engagement feels like you’re at an all-day block party, and this is the soundtrack to get people of all kinds to come together on the dancefloor. Over the course of his career, Nickodemus has traveled all over the world and interacted with a wide variety of musicians. As a result, with this album, he brings in a roster from all sorts of different backgrounds and locations, and puts them in conversation with each other, whether it be African, Middle Eastern, South Asian, South America, or acts from his own backyard in NYC. In lesser hands, this could easily sound messy, or even worse, it could just sound like some sort of global-sampling compilation that you would find at the checkout at a Starbucks. Fortunately, that’s not the case with A Long Engagement. That’s because not only did Nickodemus reach out to some talented individuals, you can tell he took the time to study each style of music, and to find these common intersecting points between different regional styles and put them in conversation over some great disco, funk, house, and hip hop beats. He finds just that right balance of highlighting the commonalities and the uniqueness of each artist that joins in, and that is no easy feat.

Nickodemus has given us a great soundtrack to the summer of 2018. It’s an album that everyone can enjoy, without sacrificing on the quality of the music. It’s got great grooves, works in a lot of different genres and guest artists, and never gets cheesy while still preaching a message of togetherness.