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Tremaine Johnson, the rapper and producer better known as Tree, hooked me long before I wrote about him for a Reader B Side cover feature. I’ve kept his mixtape Sunday School on repeat for months, thoroughly under the spell of its “soul trap” sound. Johnson has a knack for combining off-kilter samples and sparse drum patterns in a way that’s dissonant and strange but still melodic and soulful.
Filled with rolling waves of feedback, scattered blastbeats, and heavy instrumental buildups, No Youth sounds like a brutal and brilliant metal album—but only sort of. There’s something slightly off about the music, which careens between claustrophobic gusts of noise and cavernous, serene melodic whispers—for one thing, the band doesn’t use stringed instruments.
