''TNGHT'' is the self-titled debut

extended play An extended play (EP) is a Sound recording and reproduction, musical recording that contains more tracks than a Single (music), single but fewer than an album. Contemporary EPs generally contain up to eight tracks and have a playing time of 1 ...

of the duo

TNGHT TNGHT is a musical duo consisting of Scottish producer Hudson Mohawke and Canadian producer Lunice, formed in 2011. The duo released their self-titled debut EP to positive reviews in 2012. They announced an indefinite hiatus in late 2013, unt ...

, the collaboration of producers

Hudson Mohawke Ross Matthew Birchard (born 11 February 1986), better known by the stage name Hudson Mohawke, is a Scottish producer, composer, and DJ from Glasgow. He is known for his work in 21st century hip-hop and electronic music. A founding member of th ...

and

Lunice Lunice Fermin Pierre II (born May 15, 1988), better known by his mononymous stage name Lunice, is a Canadian record producer and DJ from Montreal. He is one half of the duo TNGHT along with Hudson Mohawke. Biography Lunice is the son of a Fili ...

. Recorded in a London studio in a couple of nights, it was released on the labels

Warp Warp, warped or warping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Books and comics * WaRP Graphics, an alternative comics publisher * ''Warp'' (First Comics), comic book series published by First Comics based on the play ''Warp!'' * Warp (comics), a D ...

and LuckyMe on July 23, 2012. ''TNGHT'' received critical acclaim. It landed on numerous year-end lists of publications including ''

Pitchfork Media ''Pitchfork'' (formerly ''Pitchfork Media'') is an American online music magazine founded in 1996 by Ryan Schreiber in Minneapolis. It originally covered Alternative rock, alternative and independent music, and expanded to cover genres includin ...

''. It was also on the American ''

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'' charts, debuting at number 180 on the ''Billboard'' 200.

Background

and

first met in 2008, when Lunice asked Mohawke to perform at a show for his Turbo Crunk crew. After spending a few years focusing on their respective careers, Lunice decided to produce simpler music instead of being "all over the place, trying to push how weird I could get, but the more I continued, the more I wanted to compress and refine my style to a point of, like, 'What if I just made a song out of one snare?' It's natural: After you've been experimenting, you calm down". After hearing Mohawke's remix of

Gucci Mane Radric Delantic Davis (born February 12, 1980), known professionally as Gucci Mane, is an American rapper. He is credited, along with fellow Atlanta-based rappers T.I. and Jeezy, with pioneering the hip hop subgenre trap music for mainstream a ...

's " Party Animal", in which Mohawke had started doing "really simple, huge, stabbing productions", Lunice met with him to share new material he had been working on, and the two formed TNGHT. The duo recorded their self-titled extended play in a few days at a very small studio outside of

Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running between Marble Arch and Tottenham Court Road via Oxford Circus. It marks the notional boundary between the areas of Fitzrovia and Marylebone to t ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, with initially no plans for release. Mohawke described the project as "a proper click", unlike previous collaborations he had done with which he was dissatisfied because it felt "like you're compromising something of yourself in it". In 2012, the duo stated that the instrumentals on the EP were planned to include rappers: "Pretty much all the tracks on the EP are placed with MCs; most of them are gonna have MCs on them at some point, though we can't talk about who those people are at the moment".

Composition

''TNGHT'' was found by some critics to sound more representative of the solo work by Lunice. According to

Beats per Minute Beat, beats, or beating may refer to: Common uses * Assault, inflicting physical harm or unwanted physical contact * Battery (crime), a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact * Battery (tort), a civil wrong in common law of in ...

's Chris Bosman, every song of ''TNGHT'' is modeled as, "Take a warped hook or two, bash it into the listeners skull with psychotic glee, add the explosive pyrotechnics of Southern rap beats, and then tear at the seams". Derek Staples of

Consequence of Sound ''Consequence'' (previously ''Consequence of Sound'') is an independently owned New York-based online magazine featuring news, editorials, and reviews of music, movies, and television. History ''Consequence of Sound'' was founded in Septem ...

described ''TNGHT'' as a combination of "regional beats",

future garage Future garage is a genre of electronic music that incorporates a variety of influences from UK garage and softer elements from 2-step garage, leading to an off-kilter rhythmic style. Characteristic sounds are pitched vocal chops, warm filtered ree ...

, and electro similar to the works of Chrissy Murderbot,

machinedrum Travis Stewart (born March 4, 1982), better known as Machinedrum, is an American electronic record producer and performer from North Carolina. As a critic for ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a "Rock music, rock inkie", the ''NME'' would be ...

'' wrote, "Chasm-deep 808 basslines bellow beneath spacious marching-band drum grooves, super-sharp snare rolls and quirky snatches of sound, building the tension to near-unbearable levels before collapsing into frenetic, ground-shaking drops". ''

Fact A fact is a truth, true data, datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance. Standard reference works are often used to Fact-checking, check facts. Science, Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by ...

'' magazine critic Tom Lea analyzed that, for most of the EP, kick and snare sounds "dominate" the drum parts, and noted "Higher Ground" to be the only song on the EP to feature the "rapid-fire hi-hats" typical in

trap music Trap music, also known simply as trap, is a subgenre of hip-hop music which originated in the Southern United States, with lyrical references to trap starting in 1991 but the modern sound of trap appearing in 1999. The genre gets its name from t ...

. Bosman compared ''TNGHT'' to the works of

GOOD Music GOOD Music (often stylized as G.O.O.D. Music; a backronym for Getting Out Our Dreams) is an American independent record label founded by rapper Kanye West in 2004. The label entered an exclusive long-term worldwide music distribution, distributi ...

producers Mike Dean and

Swizz Beatz Kasseem Daoud Dean (born September 13, 1978), known professionally as Swizz Beatz, is an American rapper and record producer. Born and raised in the Bronx borough of New York City, Dean embarked on his musical career as a DJ in 1994. At the age ...

, also noting its bass sounds were similar to those present in songs by

Hit-Boy Chauncey Alexander Hollis Jr. (born May 21, 1987), known professionally as Hit-Boy, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He first signed with fellow producer Polow da Don in 2007 as in-house production staff for his l ...

and its rhythms resembled those by producer

Polow da Don Jamal Fincher Jones (born October 15, 1977 or 1978), known professionally as Polow da Don, is an American record producer from Atlanta, Georgia. He began his career as a recording artist in the late 1990s, leaving college to pursue a career with ...

Popmatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, ...

reviewer David Amidon wrote that ''TNGHT'' opens "fairly safely" with "Top Floor", a song "just a few 808 snare trills and pair of ambient

dubstep Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London in the early 2000s. The style emerged as a UK garage offshoot that blended 2-step rhythms and sparse dub production, as well as incorporating elements of broken ...

breakdowns away" from music produced by Mr. Bangladesh, and after that, the duo are fast to present "their adventurous side" starting with "Gooooo". "Top Floor" starts "in a bit of warped new-age territory" before quickly turning into a more bass-driven landscape with an almost

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

-like voice sample in the mix. Tapping into the "gamer nostalgia" of Wonky music, Amidon described "Gooooo" as if "

Samus Aran is the protagonist of the video game series ''Metroid'' by Nintendo. She was created by the Japanese video game designer Makoto Kano (video game designer), Makoto Kano and introduced in the first ''Metroid (video game), Metroid'' (1986) for th ...

took a seat in the Total Recall chair and was planted in a

Matrix Matrix (: matrices or matrixes) or MATRIX may refer to: Science and mathematics * Matrix (mathematics), a rectangular array of numbers, symbols or expressions * Matrix (logic), part of a formula in prenex normal form * Matrix (biology), the m ...

-like goth club overseen by Shao Khan". The

instrumentation Instrumentation is a collective term for measuring instruments, used for indicating, measuring, and recording physical quantities. It is also a field of study about the art and science about making measurement instruments, involving the related ...

of the song consists of a "keening, 8-bit lead, chanted whoops, death-spiral snare rolls and gabber-grade super

saw A saw is a tool consisting of a tough blade, Wire saw, wire, or Chainsaw, chain with a hard toothed edge used to cut through material. Various terms are used to describe toothed and abrasive saws. Saws began as serrated materials, and when man ...

s".

reviewer Larry Fitzmaurice opined that the "tight tonal coils" on the song "sound like hot knives slashing through metal by its high-anxiety conclusion". Carving the songs of English trio

Nero Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68) was a Roman emperor and the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until his ...

"to their meatiest elements", as elements including looped handclaps and the signature synth rise of

Drumma Boy Christopher James Gholson (born August 11, 1983), better known by his stage name Drumma Boy (or Drummer Boy), is an American record producer and rapper. Early life Born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in Cordova, Tennessee, he was exposed to ...

are present, the bounce and juke-fused "Higher Ground" has only – or "obliterates", as Bosman puts it – two hooks, one with looped second-long female vocal samples and another with a synthesized

Southern hip-hop Southern hip-hop, also known as Southern rap, South Coast hip-hop, or dirty south, is a blanket term for a regional genre of American hip-hop music that emerged in the Southern United States, especially in Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, Texas, ...

-style "

HBCU Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of serving African Americans. Most are in the Southern U ...

brass" popping "in and out to steamroll buildings" for humorous purposes. An

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-esque sound effect of a cooing baby and "glowing, trance-like synths" are played on "Bugg'n", which was analogized by Amidon as if "Diddy Kong got ahold of a

9MM This is a list of firearm cartridges that have bullets in the to caliber In guns, particularly firearms, but not #As a measurement of length, artillery, where a different definition may apply, caliber (or calibre; sometimes abbreviate ...

on the honeycomb levels". ''TNGHT'' closes with "Easy Easy", a song led by a "discombobulating synth that should soundtrack an animated version of ''

Black Swan The black swan (''Cygnus atratus'') is a large Anatidae, waterbird, a species of swan which breeds mainly in the southeast and southwest regions of Australia. Within Australia, the black swan is nomadic, with erratic migration patterns dependent ...

''" over samples of broken and smashed windows, looped car crash noises, and gun-cocking sounds used as percussion.

Critical reception

''TNGHT'' garnered critical acclaim upon release. The EP holds an aggregated

weighted mean The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

of 83 out of 100 from

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

based on nine reviews, while on AnyDecentMusic?, it has an aggregate 7.8 out of ten, also a weighted average. Writing for ''

'', Jon Cook, scoring it a 9 out of 10, said that listeners were right in having high expectations for ''TNGHT'', noting that songs like "Bugg'n", "Goooo", and "Easy Easy" best display the "oddball brilliance" of the EP. Amidon highlighted that, rather than "playing spot the influence with us or pointing at Atlanta groups like 1017 Brick Squad and Duct Tape Entertainment with ironic laughter", the two combined what was great about their very different styles "into a very synthetic, parasitical whole", calling the EP the year's "most unexpected – and welcome – entry into the club's current infatuation with trap rap's 808 abuse". Deviant, reviewing for Sputnikmusic, had a similar opinion, saying that while collaboration albums can normally be "tiresome affair , the collaboration of Lunice and Hudson Mahawke is a "rare yet perfect duality, where we can still see what each producer has on display but when entwined together it becomes impossible to discern where one ends and the other begins". A review published in

Resident Advisor ''Resident Advisor'' (also known as ''RA'') is an online music magazine and community platform established in 2001 and dedicated to showcasing electronic music, artists and events across the globe. Its editorial team provides news, music and ev ...

called it "way more clever than your average thuggish bombast". Some reviewers felt that the group had yet to show more of their potential than what they recorded on ''TNGHT''. These included Larry Fitzmaurice, a critic for

, who awarded ''TNGHT'' the label of "Best New Music" and called it "some of the year's most brazen, positively huge hip-hop sounds". He predicted that the two have "already yielded results so impressive and of-the-moment that it's likely we haven't heard the last of it". Lea shared a similar conclusion, predicting that all of the duo's qualities would be heard on their work with

Danny Brown Daniel Dewan Sewell (born March 16, 1981), better known as Danny Brown, is an American rapper, singer and songwriter from Detroit, Michigan. He was described by MTV in 2011 as "one of rap's most unique figures in recent memory". After amassing ...

and a remix of a

Waka Flocka Flame Juaquin James Malphurs (born May 31, 1986), known professionally as Waka Flocka Flame, is an American rapper. He first became known for his 2009 single "O Let's Do It", which entered the Billboard Hot 100, ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and led him to ...

song. However, while he called ''TNGHT'' "big, dumb, and a lot of fun", he also wrote it felt like it was "the start of something great than a great record in itself". Deviant, stating that it "ends before it's even really begun", called it an overall "tremendous and kaleidoscopic introduction to a dream production duo that has already turned heads", but he wrote that only a small part of the duo's imagination shown at their live debut at

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is present on the record. In a more mixed review, ''

XLR8R ''XLR8R'' (pronounced "accelerator") is a website that covers music, culture, style, and technology. It was originally also a print magazine. History and profile ''XLR8R'' was founded as a newsprint zine in 1993 by publisher Andrew Smith in S ...

'' critic Glenn Jackson thought the EP has tracks "that are surely bound to prove useful to DJs operating in the more booming regions of 140-plus-bpm fare", but criticized it for removing Mohawke's "noted penchant for sonic adventure" in place of Lunice's "proficiency for big-system bangers", concluding that "the five tracks here result in little more than the requisite head nod for the rest of us".

Background

Composition

Critical reception

Accolades

Track listing

Charts

References