Album Review: “Cinematic Songs, Volume 4” by Tommee Profitt

I am back with the fourth installment of Tommee Profitt’s cinematic collection. This album came out on the 4th of July, which I thought was pretty cool! If you’ve been reading my previous reviews of Tommee’s music, you know how freaking obsessed I’ve become, like if I hear a small snippet of any of Tommee’s produced songs on a TV show, I have to rewind that sucker just to hear it again! I automatically get so excited, because I love the fact that this kind of music is being played in almost ways! This batch of songs are no different.

For this album, I did cheat a little and gave myself a listen to like the first five tracks before I literally had to hold myself back from hearing the rest. As far as featured artists on this, you have some of the “originals” who have worked with him in the previous albums, like Sam Tinnesz, Fluerie and Steven Malcolm, but yet we also have some new voices as well! And of course, Tomme has included two instrumentals in different sections too.

Well, let’s get this started, shall we?

Click here to read Cinematic Songs, Volume 1 by Tommee Proffitt

We start off with “It’s Got My Name On It” that features Sarah Reeves, who sounds weirdly like both Ruelle and Fleurie with her soft, high-pitched voice. One of the things I like to do whenever I have a new artist like this, I tend to look up information about them on their Facebook music pages, and according to Sarah’s, she may only work on worship music, but this track is definitely not in that theme, which is fine anyways. I think it’s simple, lyric wise, but huge on sound. It also has a mysterious tone to it, thanks to the piano you hear throughout, but it slowly grows once you hit the middle of the song and it just explodes with such force. Second is “Welcome To The Jungle” and Tommeee had shared a trailer of a new show coming to CBS, called A Story To Tell and he mentioned that he “enjoyed creating creepy music” with artist Fleurie. This is so freaking creepy! However, I absolutely love it at the same time. In other words, it’s right up my alley!

We move on to “I Am Legend” with Colton Dixon, and if I remember correctly, he was a contestant on American Idol a few years back, wasn’t he? Whoever he is, he has a nice mellow voice. It works well with the cinematic sound, it’s a very epically (is that even a word?!) song but he has such a pop-rock kind of voice, somehow he made it work. I really enjoyed this! After that, we have “One Eye Open” and Daniella Mason, who has a beautiful voice herself. She tends to do alternative music, and I instantly liked that. I’m very interested in alternative musicians all of a sudden. Anyways, this song doesn’t sound like the rest on the album, and I love the uniqueness about it. It’s almost grime-y, very intense getting towards the end, but her voice is such a sweet kiss to this massive climax.

Click here to read Cinematic Songs. Volume 2 by Tommee Profitt

Fifth track is “Warriors” with my favorite Steven Malcolm, this actually came out as a single, when the NBA finals were about to start. Obviously, Tommee and/or Steven were rooting for the Golden State Warriors!  If the song wasn’t influenced by basketball at all, the song is really good anyways! I really love that hard, urban feel to the song! It also kind of has this creepy, I guess SAW movie like type of sound that makes it even better. Next there’s “Incendiary” and this is one of the instrumentals I was telling you about in the beginning, and after the previous song ended, I felt as thought this was good as like a part two. It was still very powerful, really loving the drums. They were fast and exciting! Once it’s done, “Wicked” is next and it features Royal & the Serpent, again I’ve never heard of them so I had to look them up, and they are an indie band. This song is extremely cool as it dabbles in the electronica world. I thought that was really cool, as I was not expecting that at all, but I love musical surprises.

“Feel That Fire” is next and it has Whissell on it, and I love her voice! She reminds me of ZZ Ward, that is if she had a deeper voice. I like the fact that the bluesy sound of her voice is very present in the song, even with the strings commanding as much space too. It just gave me a totally different vibe then the others on the album. Next we have another favorite vocalist of mine, Beacon Light and the song “Takin Over” and this has a sci-fi type of vibe to it when it first starts, but then when he speaks, that hip hop sound creeps in the back and it’s so interesting. I really love ominous sounding music, weirdly enough I have always been this way!

The last four songs, start with “Vagabond” with FJØRA and this is such a pretty tune. It’s so gentle and gives you this adventurous, wanderlust feeling while you’re listening to it. I think FJØRA’s voice was good, it gave the song a softer approach and the fact that Tommee didn’t give it an incredible finish like he’s known to do, because I think it would have been too much with her voice, between the lyrics, her voice and this mellow sound makes it different. Our last instrumental is next, and it’s called “Trail Of Evidence” and it’s absolutely stunning! I really loved the solo cello introduction, at least I’m hoping that’s what I’m hearing! I’m not very good at pointing out certain instruments, I’m sorry! When I first looked at the title, instantly I thought this would be this heavy hitter but it wasn’t. It was fairly soft, but powerful too.

Finally, we move on to “Can’t Hold Us Down” that has Sam Tinnesz in it. This was one of the first new songs I saw on YouTube that made me realize we might be getting a new set of songs soon, within a week later, Tommee announced it on his Facebook page! This song has that fusion of both cinematic and rock genres. I liked the fact that since Sam is a rocker anyways, that he’s influencing his known genre into the actual song. So, the entire thing takes a different turn, it could’ve been an explosion of a song. It was a good song, don’t get me wrong, but the it wasn’t in your face like I figured and ultimately wanted it to be in the end. The last song is “Hurricane” with Fleurie and we end this cycle in a very emotional based track. It instantly gave me this sad vibe. It does gradually grow into this colorful flower, but it never really loses that feeling of being lost.

Click here to read Cinematic Songs, Volume 3 by Tommee Profitt

This was a great mix of different directions. I like the fact that Tommee is getting more experimental with his beats, and the fact he’s using other artists with different ranges and bring their own flavor with them. I think that’s one of my favorite things about this genre; it doesn’t matter what kind of music you generally wok with to help express yourself, if you’re up for the challenge, something good could come out of it. This is how other people, who have never heard of these artists before, can discover new music within that song.

Have you listened to Tommee Profitt’s new volume of cinematic songs yet? If so, which is your favorite?

Album Review: “Cinematic Songs Vol. 3” by Tommee Profitt

Well, this time I was finally up-to-date on my music and found that Tommee Profitt had released a new volume of cinematic songs to the world! In the beginning of February, I had some issues and couldn’t get my music to work and so I had to resort to going old school and used YouTube again. I love listening to Tommee’s music so I must’ve needed to hear a couple of my favorites from the previous albums, and somehow I found a couple of new songs by chance and at first, I didn’t even know they were really new until later on when I went on Spotify again and the whole thing popped up!

The album itself has a total of thirteen tracks, two of which are instrumentals, and yes I was very happy about that! If you’ve read the reviews of volume one and two, there a few artists that are featured on this that may seem familiar to you. I’m happy to see Tommee has other great people working with him on this one too! I think it’s a nice way to bring out new talent and get their voices heard to a bigger audience since more and more people are starting to really enjoy trailer or cinematic music like I do!

We start off with “I Know Your Secrets” that features Liv Ash. She was one that was on the last album, and I thought her sweet, low voice was perfect for this song. It kind of adds an edger element to it. She’s very commanding and matches well to the beat itself, but I think the song would be better without the sound in general. I do love the last minute or two, where the hefty bass drops! It’s such a powerful sound! Second is “Empire” with Christian rapper Steven Malcolm, I really liked this! I thought it was very upbeat, I really like the more hip hop sound to it. I know I mentioned this already, but I real weakness for cinematic rap or hip hop and this doesn’t help it, but I don’t care!

Next we have “Will I Make It Out Alive” with Jessica Early and this, along with the first song were the two tracks I found on YouTube earlier last month. They were the ones that made me look into this a little more, because I usually have a pretty good memory, but I needed to make sure I wasn’t losing it! This is pretty quiet compared to the first two, but I’ve really grown to like the mellower ones lately so it’s not bad. After that, we venture into “Rebel Renegade” with Beacon Light, another rapper that I really enjoyed on volume two. First off, I really love the title! It has a nice ominous tone to it, but it also has a strong beat that isn’t too obnoxious. Sixth song is “Only One King” which made me believe that it had some strong religious views to it, and that’s fine. I think some of my favorites might’ve had that as inspiration. It features Jung Youth, who is a rapper out of Nashville. The song itself is pretty low on energy, but it’s not bad though!

We have our first instrumental track next called “Benevolence” and I swear this is one of my favorite words. I think the word has a beautiful meaning and I just like how it’s spelled. I know I’m weird, we’ve already established this a long time ago! I think the sound of it goes great with the meaning, it starts off really soft and slowly comes alive to this beast, but it never loses the sweet notes to it that the piano brings. Next we go back to the vocal tracks and this one has two artists on it. “Rescue” features Raine Wilder and another favorite Svrcina Raine’s mostly works on hip hop and alternative–some people would consider “cinematic” alternative music–projects. Svrcina is purely on the backing vocals, so she’s not prominent compared to him, but I think it is still an interesting dymantic with the strong music that slowly but surely grows.

And then we hear another familiar voice, Sam Tinnesz is back with the first of two songs he’s featured on this album. “The Hate Inside” brings out his mysterious demeanor, and I really like how the beat is somewhat tailored to his low voice. It sort of has a pop-hip hop element to it, as it doesn’t have that recognizable commanding sound like the some of the other tracks. It mostly stays at a hauntingly, slow pace so it’s pretty unique. The ninth song is “When The Sun Goes Down” and it has Laney Jones, and she has this soft little voice, but you instantly know it’s going to be an interesting track after that first ping goes off. Despite this assessment though, it takes it a bit to build into the beast I knew it would be, you just have to patient. You need to hold off until you hear 3:47, trust me you’ll really like that part!

We’re getting down to the wire now with the last four songs! We have “This Ship Is Going Down” with singer Xeah, This one was a totally different take then what I was expecting, because I’m hearing autotone in the choruses. It kind of gives me old 90’s or early 00’s pop music vibes but it’s definitely cinematic, there’s no questions about it. It’s very interesting that’s the only way to describe it! Last instrumental is “Decimator” which made me think it would be big and heavier than the other track, we all know that I can be wrong. Thankfully, this time I wasn’t! It was everything that I thought it would sound and then some with the addition of the choir! It’s very short, but amazing too! We have Sam Tinnesz back with “Cruel World” and I really like the fact you can hear a slight rock sound with this one, at least to me this is what I got from it! It’s not overwhelming, kind of soft and mellow. And lastly, we have “Where You Are” with another favorite Mike Mains. This one has a very soft introduction, I actually liked it. It was a perfect way to end a jam packed album.

I thought this was a very good batch of songs! I actually like it more than the last one, but I don’t know because I was so late to the party, but I think the more Tommee does these albums, the better he gets! And of course, I love discovering new artists and Christian rappers, like Jessica Early, Steven Malcolm, and Xeah! If you haven’t listened to it yet, you really need to find it either on Spotify or YouTube, or hey you can even buy it on iTunes too!

If you have listened to volume three, what are your favorite songs so far? Who do you think Tommee should work with on the next one? Let me know!