Thank you GameChops for sending us the digital album for review!
Avatar & Chill is a lo-fi album featuring melodies and samples from the Avatar: The Last Airbender series and its spinoff games. Some songs are remixes of tracks, while others simply capture the main ideas of the source material and add some lo-fi aspects on top. Either way, they are all pretty well done and pretty enjoyable to listen to. One thing to note, though, is that this is very much best experienced using headphones, as lower quality speakers tend to remove important elements that make the songs sound good such as basslines and background noise.
My personal favorite songs are the ones that are slower and more atmospheric, such as Left My Heart In Republic City or Jinora’s Light. Others mimic the melodies using synth replicas of Asian instruments like the kalimba or lute, and seem to be more melodically based and don’t sound as good in my opinion. They also tend to be somewhat repetitive, since the source songs don’t really have that much to them. Even despite this, they all have enjoyable vibes and can be rather soothing at times.
All of the songs are mixed pretty well. If a bassline is present, it is impactful yet still allows other musical elements to shine. Any extra noise is used solely to amplify certain moments or make sure the song isn’t too quiet, and it accomplishes both of these quite well. The chords are used well in all situations, and properly convey emotion and rhythm when needed.
Avatar & Chill, while it’s not perfect, is very nice to listen to. There are 14 songs, and they are very pleasant to sleep, study, or just generally chill to. It can be streamed on most services, and you can find more information on it at the GameChops website.