g-clef

Review

This is a collaboration between Kitto and J Llyod, half of the band Jungle. This album is one of the most beautiful, and beautifully unique of 2025, hands down. Their smooth take on neo-soul is one of the biggest shifts in the genre I've ever heard. It's genuinely so atmospherically lovely. It's the feeling of honey sitting on your tongue, and the feeling of blossom falling down on top of you on a spring day. It brings the comforts of soul's past into a modern light. These songs are ripe for sampling, assuming they'll allow it of course. Everything here feels like something you could hear on a neo-soul laden rap album from someone with a great appretiation of the genre. Lyrically this album is a smartly written story of love and loss. That loss coming most noticably on the centerpoint of the album, over, which is a breakup song, but hidden under the guise of a soft, catchy soul track. The love half of this album is sprinkled throughout, from the opener "In Your Arms" which, predictably (being the first track) is the most loved filled song on the album. It's simply a mutual want to be in the others arms, and there may be no more obvious sign of love than that. The love songs continue after the halfway point though, on one of the catchier tracks here, "Toyko Rain" our main character is just asking to be loved again, that things will be different, because this time she knows what she wants.Falling in an out of love is something that this album explores a lot lyrically, and the fact that the final product was so well thought out is a tesitment to these two's creativity. This is less of a collection of songs and more of a collection of stories playing out over the stages of a relationship. This isn't the first concept album to tackle love in this way, and it certainly won't be the last, but it may be one of the only ones to do it with such suave.

If this album went in any direction sonically either than the one they did I don't think the story would have landed nearly as well. There is something about the incredibly steady grooves and skillful vocals that bring you into the story better than I think any other style could acomplish. Although I think going for this approach really can make it feel like it should be a neo-soul hip-hop album, because in some of the less creatively fulfilled parts it can feel more like the rapping was removed from a much better album. Of course that's never a bad thing, if you take away the rapping from some of the best hip-hop albums of all time you're still left with a skillfully produced masterpiece. I think that if Loaded Honey ever get the opportunity to work with a hip-hop act they need to jump on it because that collaboration might make the album of the year. The last notable element of this album are the videos, which are all shot in a very specific and creative way, that changes the contexts of these songs massively. They all have motifs of slow motion, deserts, and yes, beleive it or not, nuns. They come together to create a story much like the one we hear on the album, but of course only in parts because there are only a limited number of videos. Altogether this album is some incredibly promising neo-soul from some artists that took the risk to branch out, and it paid off more than they could have imagined. If Loaded Honey continues into the future I will be waiting with bated breath to hear it.