‘Albion Files’ serves as a pleasing, if not revolutionary album of chill hip-hop tracks. Produced by Terrace Martin, a multi-instrumentalist and producer for a variety of projects ranging from his own albums as a rapper, producer and saxophonist to his work on famous hip-hop albums such as Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly,” the album represents Martin’s work on older unfinished ideas from his work around the period of 2006-2009.
Martin’s newest project, “Albion Files” is a collection of lost and forgotten ideas that he took and reshaped into his first album project of 2025. The collection of songs ranges from hip-hop influenced beats with features from artists such as A$AP Ferg (Full Speed) to jazz tracks collaborating with keyboardist and arranger Robert Glasper (Dear Dena).
As a whole, the project lacks overall cohesion due to its nature as a collection of ideas from a variety of Martin’s earlier projects. Despite an overall lack of cohesion, there are a good few standout tracks that draw from a variety of genres and influences. Right off the bat, the track “Full Speed” is a groovy, R&B-influenced hip-hop track that features rappers DRAM and A$AP Ferg. The track drips with Martin’s personal style for his delving into hip-hop; the track serves as a pleasing, if not overly present example of Martin’s production style. The R&B and hip-hop fusion style continues through the second track, which features soul singer Tone Trezure for a vintage and crisp sounding hip-hop track on “My Saturday.”
Martin’s arranging skills also feature heavily on this track, with the brilliantly arranged vocal harmonies in the chorus. The next standout track, “Not Sharing” showcases a shift in sound from the early tracks to a funkier, more vintage sound. “Not Sharing” begins with a sharp guitar line that settles into a tight, compressed groove. This track features R&B singer Ogi, who delivers a memorable performance against the bass and drum heavy instrumental.
“Valdez” continues the groove focus with an entirely instrumental track that builds from a fantastic bassline to a nasty saxophone solo to the end. This track showcases Martin’s jazz inflections at their best, as he shouts directions to the other musicians as they play and build to an awe-inspiring climax. The final standout, “Dear Dena,” is the most directly jazz track on the record, and features Martin playing saxophone against Robert Glasper’s beautiful piano. The two hang on a beautiful chord progression, improvising conversationally over the sound of Glasper’s piano.
As a whole, “Albion Files” suffers from a lack of a cohesive sound or concept throughout and is unable to shake the marks of a record filled with years-old ideas reformed into a complete project. Despite a lack of cohesion, however, the quality of the tracks remains at a high level throughout, with only a few numbers letting up the record’s momentum in strange places (for example, “Let’s Get Cozy” marks a comparatively boring track sandwiched between two fantastic tracks, “Mind My Business” and “Not Sharing”). The collaborations on the album also lift the album from its humble roots, with fantastic features especially from Ogi and Robert Glasper. The album also suffers from poor mixing on a few tracks, especially notable on the mix of Ogi’s voice in “Not Sharing.” As a holistic album project, the sound suffers from genre-hopping, where many of the tracks create some whiplash played back-to-back. Though the tracks are far from pastiches of their genres, they often adhere to the genre conventions to a fault, where the multi-genre album sound may have flowed better through tracks which fused the many featured sounds. Despite this, the features Martin chose meld well with the songs and always elevate the instrumentals upon which they are placed.
As a whole, the album overcomes its nature as a set of unfinished ideas to become a solid, if not great example of Terrace Martin’s production during the time (~2006-2009). Despite a few stumbles in mixing and track list, “Albion Files” is a collection of groovy and beautiful songs ranging a variety of genres and sounds.
