Niecy Blues – Exit Simulation LP

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’s 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 don’t believe, you feel something.”

• Full-length debut by South Carolina singer and producer cycles between simmering ballads, ghosted R&B, downtempo gospel, and looped vocals

Label: Kranky – KRANK240

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album

Country: US

Released: Nov 10, 2023

Genre: Electronic, Funk / Soul

Style: Abstract, Ambient, Rhythm & Blues

Tracklist

A1 IIII

A2 The Nite B4

A3 U Care

A4 Violently Rooted

A5 Exit Simulation

A6 Exits

B1 Soma

B2 Messages From Above

B3 Lament

B4 Violently Rooted Reprise

B5 The Architect

B6 Analysis Paralysis

B7 Cascade