Album Review: Mood Control by BLK ODYSSY
BLK ODYSSY’s third record conceals how little control anyone has inside it: not the listener, not the preacher on the station, not the hustler trying to stretch one more grin out of a poisoned night.
Juwan Elcock’s story has always been mythological. The New Jersey‑born, Austin‑based singer and producer leads BLK ODYSSY as a project that swings between smooth celebration and sharp social critique. His 2021 debut BLK Vintage channeled his own trauma and joy into dusty funk songs about Black life and desire, while the 2023 follow‑up Diamonds & Freaks pushed that erotic concept into a loose‑limbed party album. He began to build a cosmology where sensuality coexisted with spirit, and each project introduced new characters—pimps, preachers, ghosts—vying for the microphone. Last year’s 1‑800‑Fantasy attempted to fuse rock guitars and talk‑radio skits into that mythology. It sounded like an accomplished experiment that sometimes drifted into gimmick; the narrative concept of a call‑in fantasy line never cohered, and the songs felt tethered to interludes rather than liberated by them.
Mood Control bends that lineage toward something more dangerous and reflective. The record folds the radio‑drama idea into a single pirate broadcast: someone hijacks the frequency, promising “intergalactic honeys” and “chocolate echinacea” before a Federal Communications Commission cut‑off. In that frame, Elcock’s funk‑and‑soul psychedelia runs on darker circuitry, fusing industrial low‑end with an almost Pentecostal cadence.
As the introduction of “The Nativity of Chaos” suggests, this is a druggy nativity story whispered through static. A voice posing as a wellness infomercial asks, “Are you depressed? … Does the weight of the world feel too heavy to carry?” before a robotic host lowers your defenses and announces, “You are now possessed by the frequency of BLK ODYSSY”. Instead of a birth scene, Elcock offers a riddle about escape: “After someone in your brain cut off all the plugs… Got high last night to relieve all my pain,” he sings, while an interjected voice wonders, “What comes first, the pain or the drugs?” The call‑and‑response works because it is both cosmic and intimate. The track is built on distorted bass that thuds like a heartbeat and glitched funk riffs that sound like a VHS tape being rewound. When Elcock asks if “Jesus [is] the plug” and the narrator promises to cleanse your mind, you feel the temptation of letting your consciousness slip away.
“Waves,” which arrives after a run of hedonistic songs, is the album’s centrepiece and the moment that best balances bliss with paranoia. A wash of tremolo guitars and sub‑bass comes in waves, and Elcock pleads, “Send me on a wave … Send me to the frequency you desire”. The song is about surrendering to someone else’s mind control, and Elcock sings in a falsetto so tender it feels like a prayer. In the first verse, he confesses that he wasted time but loved the intoxication, and then asks, “Did I do voodoo? Baby, I just took my time with you.” The arrangement is lush but anxious. It’s one of the most fully realized compositions Elcock has released, and it’s easy to imagine it taking root in a dancefloor or meditation class. The preacher persona appears again on “Heartbreak,” but the subject is heartbreak as a religious crisis. Over a slow‑burn groove with gospel keys and trap‑style drums, Elcock pleads, “Baby, if you love me, wear me out like I’m your jeans… What’s the true religion, Heaven, Hell, or in between?” When he sings about heartbreak blowing in the wind, you feel both the cliché and the ghost of a freedom song.
The album’s climax, “The Exodus of Chaos,” is a fever dream of violence and rebirth. Gunshots throughout, and the hook says, “Last night I went off, the monkey on my back like [gunshots]… Nowadays I don’t miss—if I do, double back like [gunshots].” The verses recount paranoia and trauma: he imagines the FBI sliding through his door, remembers being thirteen when his brother introduced him to “the devil’s cup,” and mocks those who claim consciousness while ignoring real violence. It asks, “Someone is calling my name/I want to know what this noise is,” and then the track morphs into a spoken‑word instruction manual: “Step one, just lean up out the window… step four, okay, now point it at your chest.” The directions read like a ritualistic suicide or a commentary on self‑harm disguised as liberation. Underneath, there’s a swirling noise bed that evokes late‑night radio static and sirens. Elcock’s voice dissolves, then a French translation of “the cure is always hidden inside the sound” arrives, as if a hidden healer is hijacking the feed. The track ends with an FCC notice cutting off the broadcast.
What distinguishes Mood Control from its predecessors is not just its darkness but its focus. BLK Vintage often wandered between vignettes, and Diamonds & Freaks relished the party. Here, Elcock filters his optimism through paranoia and his healing language through possession. The sermons that once offered comfort now crack under lust and grief. Instead of celebrating freedom, the narrator revels in addiction: “Got high last night to relieve all my pain,” “You want that pleasure and that pain, want the fire and the rain,” “Don’t cry, we’ll just die tonight but we’ll be back on Saturday.” The pirate‑radio interludes and mock infomercials give the record momentum and a shape, unlike the sprawl of 1‑800‑Fantasy. The characters he introduced on earlier albums are still here—the hustler, the preacher, the ghost—but now they fight for the same mic, interrupting and bleeding into each other. The result is less like a concept album than a possessed frequency you can’t turn off.
Elcock’s songwriting is uneven. His hooks mutate with every repetition, bending catchiness into compulsion, but sometimes he settles for vague imagery. On “Heartbreak,” the extended bridge of “there’s this place I know, and it’s so serene” risks blandness. On “Saturday,” his description of texting and hotel rooms feels like filler compared with the vivid imagery elsewhere. He also returns to drug metaphors so often that they lose shock value. The repetition can be hypnotic, as when he turns the phrase “waves waves waves” into an oceanic trance, but sometimes it feels like autopilot. That said, when he stretches beyond clichés, the writing cuts deep. The instructions to “sacrifice your flesh” and “put the barrel up to the ego” on “The Exodus of Chaos” are frightening and poetic. The conversation in “The Nativity of Chaos” about whether pain or drugs comes first feels like a real confession. The satirical interlude where a DJ named Mac Macintosh hawks “Mood Control” as a product is both funny and chilling.
Despite some lyrical missteps, Mood Control works because of its sensations. The production is stunning. Distorted funk riffs snap against reverb‑drenched choirs, and there are low‑end tremors you feel in your gut. Vocals collapse into static; you often can’t tell where one voice ends and another begins. Gospel harmonies ride over industrial bass, and hip‑hop cadences slide into psychedelic soul. The album plays like a continuous loop where temptation, trauma, and rebirth bleed into each other. BLK ODYSSY’s world has always been chaotic. For all its flaws, the album embodies the danger and thrill of losing control. It’s a daring move, and it proves he’s capable of more than just concept‑album gimmicks.
Solid (★★★½☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Apologize,” “Waves,” “Possessed”