We have previously featured Night Wolf for his collaborative track with Lois Powell, so when we heard that the brilliant rising producer was back with Kickback – a new collaboration with The Fods, we couldn’t wait to listen and share our experience.
This version of Kickback opens with brooding strings and ethereal vocalizations, tapping into Night Wolf’s cinematic signature, expanding with textured trip-hop drums with dimensional melodic details. We are invited into an introspective space with the lyrics, “Far away in another world, thousands live and can’t be heard, they wish upon their weeping sound, their screams shake cities to the ground…”
We love the vocal design, and hypnotic yet emotional energy that manifests. As for the message, the song feels like it’s about people who are ignored or unheard. There’s a zeitgeist relatability to the message, about how we struggle in the background whilst the world moves on.
There’s anger and frustration that feels cathartic and delivered with a raw authenticity. Our pain might feel overlooked but there is also an escape through fighting for something better, and eventually rising up from rags to riches.
Wisdom is also imbued in the track and it warns that success and power can come with the cost of losing oneself to the darkness. The concept of the “kickback” seems like both the reward and the consequence. It’s pretty genius songwriting overall.
We could imagine it in a film like Marty Supreme, or a TV show like Severance or Euphoria on HBO which follows someone’s rise to success and the dues that might be paid. We learn that Night Wolf met The Fods via an online chat on XRP Radio and asked to remix the track. He tells us how he was sent the project and rebuilt the song around the vocals and backing vocals.
Needless to say, we are in awe, and have added Kickback to our New Music Spotlight playlist, and our TIMELESS and TRIPPY playlists, whilst we continue to stream Night Wolf‘s exquisite, growing discography and the original version of The Fods‘ Kickback.