40 Winks
The Lucid Effect

When new music releases don’t meet expectations, we can turn back time and dust off lesser-known albums that didn’t receive the recognition they deserved back then. Among these, we remember The Lucid Effect by the 40 Winks, a Belgian duo formed by the talented producers Padmo and Weedy.

The 40 Winks emerged in the early 2000s and decided to embark on a journey of experimentation and musical exploration. The Lucid Effect is their third LP, released after some self-produced tests and a couple of works, More than Loops and Sound Puzzle, which revealed the abilities of the two Antwerp beatmakers.

The third effort by the 40 Winks is released by the German label Project: Mooncircle, and the change in label seems to influence the final result. We are indeed dealing with a mature, bold, and more successful work than the previous ones.

It’s impossible not to notice a growth, a qualitative difference compared to the band's other recordings. But what makes The Lucid Effect different from a collection of hip-hop instrumentals? The answer is simple: we are not faced with the usual sounds put on loop, but with an articulated album rich in languid atmospheres, far from the clichés of Double H.

To make sense of it, it might be useful to quote the opening lines of the group’s biography found on the Project: Mooncircle website:

No hay banda! (“there is no band”, Mulholland Dr. 2001) pretty much sums up where 40 Winks aims to go with its instrumental hip hop: meticulously chop and paste samples together, to create an atmosphere of beats and vibes which steps beyond unimaginative loops.

The quotation allows us to grasp one of the main characteristics of The Lucid Effect: a work of cutting, sewing, and overlapping sonic layers that magnificently deceives us, almost as if we found ourselves in front of an orchestra or a jazz ensemble when, instead, “no hay banda”. It’s all a trick, a splendid illusion.

Let's get to the point. The opening “Sleep Rock” projects us into a dreamy mood, where the drum roll gives way to a groove of piano, bass, and drums, punctuated by harps and cinematic orchestrations. After a puff of a cigarette or a sip of whiskey, a track comes along that changes the game, “Wise up”. The rhythms become syncopated, akin to one of the incarnations of the ingenious Madlib, the Yesterdays New Quintet.

There are pieces that satisfy the b-boys (“Wizardry”, with its oriental flutes reminiscent of DJ Krush; the single “Rap about That (Smoke and Mirrors)”, with that bar chatter serving as a prelude to reversed samples and blazing scratches), yet it’s the more peculiar moments that draw our attention, especially in the second part of the album. We have incursions into drum and bass (the rhythmic variations of “Input A”, the refined “Winks Jazz”), a track like “Hazy Notion” that seems to come out of a spy story soundtrack, and “Keep on”, a brilliant mix of irregular beats, wind instruments, and vocal samples, very similar to compositions by The Cinematic Orchestra.

The conclusion of “Sleep Ritual”, full of female voices and hints of vibraphone, abruptly halts. The spell is broken or someone simply turned off the record player.

Once we have returned to our senses, we try to draw conclusions. The impression is that, with The Lucid Effect, the 40 Winks have begun a path of distancing from hip-hop, continued in the following It’s the Trip. And indeed, in the second half of the album, there is a lack of some boom bap that would have kept things more cohesive and made the tracklist more cohesive.

Apart from this note, the album remains remarkable, perhaps the best from the Central European group. Its greatest merit is that it appeals even to those unfamiliar with the genre, precisely because of the absence of rhymes and the considerable musical variety.

In short, if you’re looking for relaxation and a bit of magic, sit in your favorite armchair, close your eyes, and play The Lucid Effect. You won’t regret it.