At a point where hip-hop grooves meet R&B cool, where understated deliveries merge with more energetic beats, where smooth and sultry soul slow dances with pop infectiousness, where past music references are reinvented for a whole new generation, that’s where you find From Cozy With Love, the fourth music project from Jonah.
Opening with the restrained and underplayed R&B tones of Before Anything, the listener is immediately cocooned with lush, liquid sonics and gentle lyrical ebbs and flows. And it is this core sound that provides the albums platform and creative continuity, even when things are ramped up on tracks such as Focused or My Way.
And, for me, as great as the more driven and buoyant parts of the album are, it is the supple and subtle moments that work best. From the short, skittering grooves of Patience Interlude to the drifting and slightly futuristic haze of No More Lies, it is those songs that use space and understatement that, ironically, seem to have the most impact. And some songs take this laid back delivery and push the boundaries into some more adventurous territory. Cold Winters, featuring Kiing Moo, is cinematic and slightly psychedelic, Low is a downbeat and brooding take on electronica-driven ambient R&B and New Tint is a stream of consciousness lyrical flow courtesy of Dflako put to minimalist grooves.
From Cozy With Love is the sound of existing genres being gene-spliced into new potential. It is the sound of traditional building blocks being reassembled into new sonic architecture and held together with the cement of forward-thinking music technology. It is the sound of a young music artist influenced by the past but helping to write a whole new musical chapter. It’s the sound of the sonic future being embraced.
