Exit Simulation [Vinyl]

不知道是不是經過了大疫情時代的關係，近幾年發現有非常多優秀且擁有美聲的環境音樂創作者，一不小心就讓自己串流上的歌單變成了一整片療癒狀態，然後開始想找一些「更」有趣的存在，然後 Niecy Blues 就在 2023 快結束時令人驚艷的蹦了出來。

Niecy Blues 的音樂散發著一股溫柔的邀請，接近不自覺的狀態使人抽離進入一個聖潔的空間，時間感甚至會消失，無限徘徊在他用鍵盤、吉他、貝斯、合成器以及聽到就被神聖感染的歌聲所創造的迴聲中，空間系的民謠、R&B、偶爾帶入緩拍以及福音緩慢的染色，《Exit Simulation》不是改變聆聽當下環境的那種環境音樂，而是在另一個美妙的世界暈開綻放。

South Carolina singer and producer Niecy Blues describes her songwriting process like an undertow: “I feel a strange pull, and let it carry me, following swirling leaves… whole days roll by, forgetting about the body.” Their full-length debut, Exit Simulation, captures this sense of deep-rooted divination, cycling between simmering ballads, ghosted R&B, downtempo gospel, and looped vocal improvisations—often within the same track. The title is taken from a science fiction novel she read during the purgatory of the pandemic, alluding to a dimensional ideation of departure—“the permission to imagine leaving.”

Recorded in her current home of Charleston, she characterizes the album mood in terms both reflective and raw: an exploration of things suppressed, foundations beginning to crack, “talking myself off a ledge.” The music of Niecy Blues transposes reverie and reckoning into emotive devotionals of keys, guitar, bass, synth, and bewitched voice, steeped in sacred atmospheres gleaned from a youth spent in a religious Oklahoma household: “My first experience with ambient music was church—slow songs of worship, with delay on the guitar… even if you dont believe, you feel something.