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.
