The real beauty of instrumental rock to me comes from the fact that you can really do almost whatever it is you want stylistically and it’ll sound at the very least decent. You can easily shift from something riff-heavy to psychedelic at the drop of a hat to create an incredibly varied work that just somehow comes together pretty well despite the obvious differences. Sometimes, though, subtle differences can make for one hell of a listen, and that’s precisely what we got with the latest offering from Zayn.

With just three tracks to call its own, “You” is a very humble EP that doesn’t really do a whole hell of a lot to really grab the attention of the listener in the same way some heavily psychedelic works might, but, somehow, Zayn manages to craft a work that becomes much more than just some nice atmospheres that happen to fall into categories of rock. With surprising excellence at intriguing moments, “You” has the capacity to easily go from a nice selection of post-rock atmospheres that are effortless to lean back into before swapping to some tasty math rock that has much more of a crunch than I would’ve expected, but it’s here that Zayn truly excels at their diversity. So much of the charm and intrigue of this EP comes from the simple fact that Zayn refuses to stay in the same place with the same sound for long, and I truly do believe that comes to their great benefit as stagnation can become a real plague for works like this. Despite that, “You” easily dodges those pitfalls without a care in the world and the piece’s theme of a collective single-minded movement of egotistical maniacs can carry on without even thinking about the challenges it faces. Incredibly few works can flaunt such gracefulness, but it’s “You” that makes it look at though Zayn has been pulling it off for decades on end.

Any single slab of rock can easily try to be creative and diverse in the same way that “You” succeeds in doing, but it’s not often whatsoever that it’s pulled off the same way that it is here. There’s no doubt that Zayn surprised me at just about every way with this EP, and with the promise of more on the way, I can’t wait to see how they grow and expand upon their craft.

LISTEN to “You” on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Zayn on Facebook here.