In Daytona Yellow

Leon Vynehall likes to work his thoughts out on tape. The British dance producer’s decade-plus career has anchored itself around densely conceptual releases that are as much a peek into the artist’s headspace—supplemented with novellas, short films, and essay-length creative statements—as they are advancements in his room-filling house music. Even the stripped-down, banger-first mentality of 2021’s Rare, Forever expressed self-conscious concern over the album’s lack of window dressing: Halfway through “Dumbo,” Vynehall paused to ask a question— “Dya know what I mean?”—as though worried that the music wasn’t speaking for itself. With his newest release, In Daytona Yellow, Vynehall turns fully inward, baring a raw, neurotic, and multifaceted portrait of the self in an attempt to escape his habitual perfectionism. It’s an album that, for better and worse, sees him at his least composed.

One of the big selling points of In Daytona Yellow is its focus on the human voice. Vynehall enlists a stable of guest vocalists to sing and rap across his beats in the manner of Timbaland’s Shock Value round-tables, using each collaborator as a bridge to explore poppier derivatives of his style. He also dips his own toe in the waters, singing, talk-singing, and reading from an evolving free-verse poem. The pivot to lyric-forward work is a well-worn move—from Matthew Dear to Morgan Geist to Todd Edwards, many dance producers have found their own path into the singer-songwriter tradition—but Vynehall’s approach is marked by shyness. His singing voice, an earnest, husky rasp draped in thick curtains of post-processing, struggles to make a convincing case for its presence in the few tracks in which it deigns to appear. Opener “Life Is Not Enough” quickly trades the exuberant stabs of its opening measures for lush downtempo strings muddled by Vynehall’s inert croon. It’s a moving introduction, but the sparse arrangement highlights his inexperience in conveying sung emotion; the plasticky pitch correction that swallows his verses feels less purposeful than self-protective.

Vynehall’s collaborators have an easier time slotting into In Daytona Yellow’s sonic universe. Lead single “Mirror’s Edge” embroiders its murky pulse with vocals from POiSON ANNA that morph from amorous chatter to plaintive queries: “What does it mean when I need you?/Who do you call in despair?” The song eventually boils over, collapsing into a florid haze of orchestral noise before revving back with a full-throttle coda. At its best, the album thrives on that dynamism: “Cruel Love” abandons its steady groove for skeletal chords that flare without warning into blown-out shrieks, escalating the paranoid refrains of singer Beau Nox to an anthemic climax.

Vynehall’s adeptness in balancing the character of his vocalists alongside these brazen production choices inevitably dulls the album’s lower-key offerings by comparison. The forlorn howls of Birmingham band Chartreuse fail to liven the plodding beat of “You Strange Precious Thing” as it ambles to a perfunctory breakdown; “Scab” rides effortlessly in the pocket of TYSON’s breezy flow, but coasts idly on vibes before sputtering out. Vynehall’s signature as a producer is never fully obscured by those of his collaborators—there’s always an underlying sharpness to his beats, a willingness to hone minor details—but the grab-bag conceit of In Daytona Yellow modulates his perspective so much as to render it near-formless. Stretched to its capacity, Vynehall’s versatility turns workmanlike.

In Daytona Yellow strives to position its jack-of-all-trades style as synecdoche for the album’s conceptual intent. As the anxious beat of “Whip” fades out, Vynehall cues a sample of an authoritative voice that states, “We develop our personality based on what’s around us… and so that means that we cut off a part of ourself.” The monologue begs speculation: Is the album, then, a chronicle of ego death, a ledger of progressive excisions? Vynehall makes no explicit declarations on the matter, but his own vocals focus on removals and departures. The opening line of the poem he returns to throughout the album begins: “Forget your perfect offering.” Stripped of his bearings, Vynehall’s strides toward his own kind of imperfection are halting, oblique, and occasionally contradictory. Before the last movements of closing track “New Skin Old Body,” he hangs on a phrase, dredging it in layers of bit-crushed noise and tape warble: “I am a strange loop.” It’s a fitting endnote for an artist caught in transition.