Endless

Music fears being confined into a space. To be labeled or categorized, is suffocating. That’s what makes Endless feel so liberating and soothing, even as it often traverses challenging—and seemingly disconnected—topics of war, technology, love, and so on. Its ephemeral nature melts each track into a singular experience as R&B dips into soft rock and electronic; sequences are tied together with ambience, starts and ends are elusive. Even the unconventional release, a methodic rollout via video of Frank Ocean constructing a staircase¹, points at a desire to live outside the lines of standard, packaged albums or directed videos—in the process, creating something structured, spontaneously.

As the title asserts, there is a cyclical constant at work with the spiral staircase as a physical manifestation. Endless’ many ideas, some of which only last a minute or so, are not so much bookended by a beginning and end, but rather, through here’s and there’s. The direct encounters of Blonde or Frank Ocean’s older work are exchanged for quick glances and subtle gestures. Ideas are never fully fleshed out or explored, rather they come as invitations to explore the connections that lie in-between. So instead of fixating on the object of affection, perhaps the more interesting focal point is the act of loving.

Of course, there’s a tension in drawing attention to the fluid essence of these moments and feelings when the vessel to convey these thoughts are done through an author and their perspective and feelings, as it is through Frank Ocean here. Does music make these ideas concrete by framing it and providing a voice, or perhaps it’s merely the best we have when it comes to conveying these ephemeral concepts? (In describing the feeling of love, does it solidify and become the thing of love?)

With Endless, Frank Ocean contemplates his presence on his own album, and grapples with this implication of capturing the process. He relinquishes the spotlight, as with “Alabama,” where Ocean’s endless “What can I do?”’s harmonize before being overtaken by Sampha’s vocals. Or with “In Here Somewhere” and “Florida”, where shades of James Blake can be heard and many of the instrumentals and transitions dispersed throughout play with Ocean’s vocals. Sometimes he comes in the form of distant, faraway voices, other times he’s heavily modulated—more machine than man. He acts as a conduit. The most “complete” thought in the album is “At Your Best”, and it’s a cover of Aaliyah’s song of the same name (which in turn is a cover of The Isley Brothers song—also of the same name). Many other tracks echo this distance between listener and Frank Ocean, whether it’s Jazmine Sullivan’s voice coming in or instrumentals that mimic human voices.

While the robotic voice in “Device Control” might hint that we’re at the mercy of technology, Endless proves the opposite². Frank Ocean’s love stories are messy affairs, the emotions come and go, the voices waver. There’s an appealing imprecision—one that can only be classified as human—that can never be mimicked by a Samsung Galaxy phone. The album is one of textures, and while a computer might be able to generate an exciting spectacle, its the fine details of the process that an automated machine would miss. Whether its the looming AI creative threat, or music execs shuffling albums around like cheap cargo³, the larger machinery that runs a lot of the music business—which motivated Frank Ocean to release this album right with Blonde, as a way to fulfill contract obligations—can package and commodity themes, and songs, and albums, but they cannot grasp the hand-craftedness of a DIY woodworking project, and they especially can’t contain the broadcasted process of it. Ironically, it’s this sharing of small-scale producing that builds the bridge between a creator and their audience, to extend a narrative into something relatable.

A collective experience where an ocean of voices can exist is created, where the stories feel universal and the sound is transcendental. It allows Endless to express love, pain, any of its many feelings, in its purest form—best captured in the one-two punch of “Rushes” and “Rushes To”. A state where feelings feel foreign, yet familiar, and the experiences are new, but instinctual. You can blur the border between still and motion pictures, a memory from a moment, and Frank Ocean proves, so too with music.