"A TROPICAL ENTROPY" From Nick León

Producer Nick León, hailing from Broward County near Miami, creates music dubbed Arquitectronica that captures the city’s vibrant energy and underlying menace. His album A Tropical Entropy blends insular electronic rhythms with glimpses of Miami’s streets, offering a dance experience that is both fun and eerily unsettling.(Electronic)

Miamis cityscape is like a living thing. Look at the Brickell City Centre. It is a complex that covers four city blocks. The Brickell City Centre has condominiums and offices and a mall. The Brickell City Centre is special because it was made to feel the breeze. This helps when it is hot in Florida. The people who built the Brickell City Centre wanted it to need air conditioning. From the outside the Brickell City Centre does not look so great.. When you go inside the Brickell City Centre it looks really nice. The lines and shapes of the Brickell City Centre are clean and wavy like the ocean. The Brickell City Centre is a place to have a store, like Sunglasses Hut. Brickell City Centre is a cool place that shows what the people at Arquitectonica can do. This company is from around here. They have been changing the way Miami looks since the 1970s. They use a lot of glass and weird shapes in their buildings. The best ones look like they belong here. They also look really fake and fancy. This makes Miami feel like a place, a place that is really luxurious and amazing.. It is weird because we all know that the climate crisis is a big problem and it could cause a lot of trouble, for the city at any time. Brickell City Centre and the work of Arquitectonica give people a feeling of luxury and awe. That is what makes the city feel so special. The buildings of Arquitectonica are a part of what makes Miami feel like a city that is not really real a city that is just a little too perfect.

Producer Nick León is from Broward County, which's just north of Miami. His music is like the city of Miami. It is full of life and energy like the city. The music also has a bit of a side like the city does. You can hear the sounds of Miami in Nick Leóns music but you can also hear something that sounds a little scary. This is like the city itself which has resorts and waterfronts but also some not so nice things going on. Nick Leóns music is often called Arquitectronica, which's a reference to the buildings, in Miami designed by Arquitectonica. León spent three years working on A Tropical Entropy. He named it after something he read in Joan Didions book Miami. This book was written in 1987. It said that the region is like an upside-down America. This is because it is really hot and there is a lot of crime. León is careful when he thinks about South Florida.. At the same time he loves it. He takes the sounds from the streets. Uses them to make his own music. This music is electronic. It is like a peek, into Leóns Miami. His Miami is a fun place.. It can also be really weird and scary if you look closely. There are times when you feel happy and free. A Tropical Entropy is a special kind of dance music album. It looks at the parts of the world not just the happy place that dance music can take you to. A Tropical Entropy is really different because it does that.

That is probably because León is stuck in music. Since the pandemic León has become one of the loved music producers of dance music. He is doing well because of the excitement around Latin influenced subgenres. People love his dancefloor hits like the song "Xtasis" that came out in 2022. Leóns music has sound and melodies that people like. He also knows a lot about rhythm which's, like the music styles of perreo tribal guarachero and raptor house. The song that really shows what he is about is "Bikini" with Erika de Casier, which came out as a single last summer. This dreamy dembow song "Bikini" with Erika de Casier makes it clear what he wants to do. He has worked with Rosalía, Empress Of and Oklou before. The guy wants to make pop music like the song "Bikini" with Erika de Casier. He is into making pop music that is what the song "Bikini”, with Erika de Casier says about him.

The thing that León wants to do comes out clearly on A Tropical Entropy. This album does not seem happy with Leóns past music, which is dance music. It jumps from one type of music to another like León gets bored if he has to do the thing for too long.

Each song on the album is short and crazy. The whole thing is over in 33 minutes. This feels really short for an album from someone people are talking about.

The drum beats on the album are, like storms. They show up all a sudden and then change the whole song before going away just as fast. Even the poppier moments are indecisive and ephemeral. But listen closely and it feels lived in, inhabited by his close friends and made with a level of detail (and neurosis) more aligned with the bedroom than the club. It’s a more personal spin of the styles he's most closely associated with, turning the swing of dancehall and dembow into paranoid, palpitating heartbeats.

In 2024 León had an interview where he talked about how he was really tired of going on tour and going to nightclubs. He said that when he started working on A Tropical Entropy he was not a fan of drums.. Even though the drums are not the main thing they really stand out. They come in strong. Hit you all of a sudden with a deep sound that is, like big waves crashing against walls that people built near the sea.

On the song "R.I.P. Current" things really pick up when the dembow rhythm starts going as fast. The music is like billboards on the side of the road when you are driving on the freeway. You see them for a second and then they are gone. This is what the melodic elements are like. They give you a break from being in Leóns head. Sometimes things happen fast. This is what happens on the song "Millennium Freak". The drums are going fast and the person singing is talking very quietly. It is like when you do something. Then you realize it was not what you thought it was. You did not know what you were getting into. Now you are not sure what to do. The music on "Millennium Freak" is, like that feeling. It is crazy and confusing. Leóns music takes you on a ride. The moods keep changing with "Hexxxus" a song that's perfect, for a club it has a dancehall kind of vibe. This song starts out really annoying and jerky. It ends up being pretty sexy.

When León is not playing music or helping pop singers he says he is an artist. This is because he does a lot of things like working on a special project about a coral reef near Miami. A Tropical Entropy has some of the sounds he has ever made. The song "Metromover" is, like techno music that you would hear underwater. It has synthesizer notes and little bits of voices that seem to come from all directions like sunlight shining down through the water. The album has a catchy song called "Crush". This song "Crush" is very short it is 91 seconds long. The song "Crush" is made up of lots of parts that do not seem to fit together. These parts are, like bits of music that go up and down. When you listen to the song "Crush" these bits of music come together to make something romantic.. The song "Crush" is over before you even know it. It is like León is trying to catch something that you can not really grab. He is taking these bits of music and playing with them until they disappear completely.

The sounds that do not last they seem to go through glass and water. This is like the city of Miami with its nightlife that is very wild. The feelings that keep changing are because of many nights out when you have changed your brain a little too much and not in a good way. The music and the lights of Miami are always there. The sounds that do not last are, like the city always moving and always changing. The feeling you get after leaving The Corner in Downtown Miami at 7 in the morning is really strange. It is peaceful and agitated and buzzing and sad all at the time. This happens after you have a drink at The Corner after a night out at a club. You did not need that drink. The song "Product of Attraction" is like a love song from the UK garage scene. It is also like a lament. These two things are tied together in a confusing way. It feels like the people who made "Product of Attraction" might have written it after a night of drinking like the one you just had at The Corner, in Downtown Miami.

Miami is a city that's full of contradictions. It can be a scary place to live in. The weather is usually too hot. There are hurricanes all the time. People are worried that the city will sink into the ocean.

The life of a DJ is also very uncertain. This is true, for anyone who wants to make a career out of the dance music industry. Miami and the life of a DJ have some things in common. They are. A little unstable and do not seem to fit in with the way things are now. This scene can be really bad for you. It can also be good. It pulls you in. Then it can hurt you. You get to see what it is like to be successful and have fun. People think you are great just because you play music. They like to party and listen to music. Sometimes they drink too much and do bad things. The music scene is like that it can be fun. It can also be bad, for you.

A Tropical Entropy is what León calls this moment in his career. He is making fun of himself with this title. So you can hear that he is trying things but he is also going back to what he did before. He is starting over. Getting really anxious about it. Sometimes this all happens in one song. The beats are not always steady. The songs do not always follow a simple plan. This shows that León was not feeling great, about going to Miami and making dance music again. That is what makes A Tropical Entropy so real and imperfect like the city of Miami where it came from. A Tropical Entropy is a honest album. I feel proud but a little uneasy and worried. This is because I am thinking about some things. The song "Broward Boyy" is. It is making me feel jittery. Then the song changes to "Bikini" which is a song that León made in 2024. This song is like a song that you sing when you are standing by the ocean. It always made me feel a little sad. Now it makes me feel something else too. When I hear the line "Meet me at the beach" I think it could mean a few things. It could mean that a relationship has become boring and routine.. It could mean that the person is asking someone to run away with them like, in a Bruce Springsteen song. Maybe it’s both at once, the sound of someone locked in a cycle they can’t get out of.

Mason Morgan