Night Melody

Writing for Night Melody began in late-2015, at the same time West's third album Howl was released. West had just come out of a 13-year relationship, inspiring the release of his fourth studio album.[8] In response to the release, West said: "I’ve been working on the mini album for four or five months straight. And I don’t mean that in the glamorous way. It’s been destroying my brain; there’s been a lot of problem solving. The ideas themselves always come quickly, it’s more the second stage of making things better and solving problems."[9]

Night Melody was met with "generally favorable" reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an average score of 75, based on 6 reviews.[3] Aggregator Album of the Year gave the release a 72 out of 100 based on a critical consensus of 7 reviews.[10]

Writing for AllMusic, Paul Simpson said "The short album is relatively straightforward, with six tracks of subdued, atmospheric techno -- no filler, no beating around the bush. The album isn't quite as dark or sad as one might expect, given the context. It seems like a logical extension of the path he's been taking with his previous few recordings."[1] Stephen Proski of Drowned in Sound wrote "Night Melody was developed as a result of the incarcerated experience of working in abject environments with digital technology: the haunting yet comforting background noise of a hard drive humming. West, when left alone to his devices, is able to transform emotion into the esoteric, colluding synthesis into vibrant, organic swaths of sound."[4] The staff at Mixmag praised West for a richer and more complex sound than his previous releases.[6]