#HEAVENSGATE VOL.2 — evilgiane

HEAVENSGATE VOL.2 — eviligiane

Suffice it to say that Giane Chenheu, the Brooklyn-born producer and founder of experimental collective Surf Gang— otherwise known as evilgiane— is having one hell of a year.

After peeking his head above ground with production of Kendrick Lamar and Baby Keem’s 2023 track “The Hillbillies,” Chenheu has been on a run of sorts. But this year, with fingerprints all over MIKE and Earl Sweatshirt’s behemoth POMPEII // UTILITY and a pair of solo projects of his own, the producer has quietly and steadily taken his sound into a new atmosphere— the range and expansiveness of which you’d be hard-pressed to find a comparison for in modern hip-hop.

His instrumental project, January’s Giane 2, is certainly impressive in its own right. But #HEAVENSGATE VOL.2, which dropped last week via Surf Gang Records, is an entirely different beast. Across 23 ever-evolving tracks, evilgiane’s trademark sound takes on new wrinkles and complexities at every turn— tottering 808s lay a firm groundwork for each track while swelling layers of atmospheric synth pads and sparse and eclectic samples form the melodic bases. 

For any producer-curated album, especially one with the sheer amount of features that #HEAVENSGATE VOL.2 carries, it’s very easy to lapse into a sense of disjointedness— of a collection of distinct voices and tastes accumulating into a semi-unified whole. On the surface, the project’s hefty tracklist may convey this sensation. But upon closer listening, each track represents a crystal of eviligiane’s sweeping sound, frozen in time and plastered, like an art gallery’s contents, in an intentional succession on the hallowed walls of the lane that Surf Gang has etched out in hip-hop’s underground.

Take, for example, the pointillistic delivery of Happydranker on “sneaky”. With almost no percussion on the track, the North Philadelphia artist is left largely to his own devices to establish a rhythm, and he does so in a whispering, almost hoarse manner, stabbing in the dark at a dimly-defined target, only to emerge with a dazzling light when the track is taken on in its entirety.

The darkened tones and intense dramatism of the Baroque period are contained within Bootee and Anysia Kym’s independently entrancing vocals on “Go Slow” and “<3”. While evilgiane provides them, respectively, with a series of short hi-hat roles and a whole-note snares, the vocalists are given their chance, in the chasms that lie between these rhythmic outbursts, to etch out a deeply emotional picture.

The project’s delving into the rutted sound of UK hip-hop with features from the likes of the Ammi Boyz and kwes e, meanwhile, take those same opaque pictures and paint them with distinctly more rounded edges. Where there’s a certain sense of melodrama on “Go Slow” and “<3”, that’s substituted for a more liberal sense of realism, and a deeper understanding of imagistic representation, on “GMT” and “truth hurts”— one that’s more reminiscent of the early Renaissance paintings and engravings of Florence than it is the depth and darkness of the Baroque period.

To trace out every individual style on the album would be an arduous task, but allow me to stretch out this analogy just a bit longer.

“HELLLLP MEEEEE !!!”, in its violet haze, moves with the broad strokes and loose interpretations of a Monet painting. “strobe lights”, featuring underground darling xaviersobased, so intensely lacks a defined instrumental structure, instead linking itself to the Dadaist invocations of aberrational absurdism with its constant, refracting use of police sirens and crashing glass, at times very intentionally mixed even above the crooning vocals of the track’s feature.

19 of the project’s 23 tracks carry just one artist in addition to evilgiane, and in that sense, it is a showcase, not only of the producer’s work and range but of the connections he’s forged within the modern manifestations of the genre. While each artist’s vocal style is what naturally gravitates toward the forefront, evilgiane’s production is the sweeping canvas upon which each track is displayed.

Even artists that appear twice on the project— like $amaad on “Nowhere Fancy” and “Sake” and xaviersobased on “strobe lights” and “762”— are challenged or displayed in distinctly different ways. No two tracks are truly the same, neither in their degree of intensity nor in their employment of evilgiane’s varied soundscapes.

#HEAVENSGATE VOL.2 is, in short, a testament to the amount of space and freedom that evilgiane’s production can provide to an artist. It is at turns a thematic counselor, a gushing river, an insistent suggestion— or it can burst forth with surprising velocity, depending on the will of its creator and the intentions behind the track. It is as routinely undeniable as it is purposefully and confidently evasive.