Why? "Alopecia"

Artist: Why?
Album: Apolecia
Label: Anticon
Release date: 11 March 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Indie Rock/Hip Hop
RIYL: cLOUDDEAD, Subtle, 13 & God

---

Tracklisting:
01. The Vowels Pt. 2
02. Good Friday
03. These Few Presidents
04. The Hollows
05. Song Of The Sad Assassin
06. Gnashville
07. Fatalist Palmistry
08. The Fall Of Mr. Fifths
09. Brook & Waxing
10. A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under
11. Twenty Eight
12. Simeon’s Dilemma
13. By Torpedo Or Crohn’s
14. Exegesis
Total running time: 44' 56"

---

[Why? - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"Picture it: a mass of energy is floating through space at an accelerated rate. The energy, when decoded by the complex circuitry of our ear canals, resembles something we recognize as musical notes. This energy, in a brilliant flash of nothing, seems to implode in on itself, wholly disappearing from the black void of space and time. It’s been sucked into the gravitational field of a black hole so immense that it dwarfs our very conception of enormity. This so-decoded musical energy is, seemingly, lost.

Oakland, California. The year is 2008. Note this. A crackle of electricity lights up the sky, and while the residents of the eighth-largest Californian metropolitan area fail to notice it, a wormhole opens up above their fair city for the slightest fraction of a millisecond, releasing the once-lost musical energy. At its constant rate of descent, the invisible mass quickly impacts the ground and spreads in a horizontal trajectory until the whole of the city is engulfed. From there, the fluent mass continues across the continent.

Sound far-fetched? Fine; you try explaining how a group like WHY? can exist in this rudimentary world.

Answering the question, nay, even making an attempt at answering “So, what do they sound like?” is deserving of a gold star. WHY? is a three-piece from Oakland, composed of beat- and word-smith Yoni Wolf, his brother Josiah, and Doug McDiarmid, joined on Alopecia by bassist Mark Erickson and Fog’s Andrew Broder. They’re really less of a black hole and more of a modified vacuum cleaner. They suck up everything along with the dirt: experimental hip-hop, indie rock, sugar-loaded pop, minimalist balladry, etc. And then, once the components are all bundled together, they flip the switch and send it all tumbling back out again and into the recording studio. More plainly, WHY? is the alphabet soup of independent music. Clever, biting, creative, intense, storied, and lurid. There’s really nothing else like it.

Alopecia, their third full-length release and second as a full band, is a darkly tinged juggernaut. 2005’s supremely wonderful but admittedly melancholic Elephant Eyelash is downright cheery in relation. The songs of Alopecia find a renewed interest from Yoni Wolf in delivering straight-up beats and rhymes alongside his more sing-songy efforts. Unsurprisingly, his styles of old and new fit together like it ain’t no joke.

Wolf isn’t in a rush to spit out his verse in a song like “Good Friday,” instead letting the lazy beat lead him through some seriously down-and-out lyrical content. At the same time, it’s considerate that Wolf plays it so that we can get a few laughs from it alongside the cringes. “The Hollows” is a masterpiece, the band’s efforts fully coalescing into a totally monstrous sound that keeps building until it bursts. The sublime opening of “A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under” is a testament to WHY?’s tendency to include every type of sound imaginable and actually make it work. “Fatalist Palmistry” is the only track even approaching the bouncy demeanor of Elephant Eyelash, but with an opening tercet like “I sleep on my back/ ’Cause it’s good for the spine/ And coffin rehearsal,” you know where you’re at.

Alopecia is therapeutic for everyone involved. Wolf is bearing the darkest parts of his soul here. Sometimes they just sound so good that it’s easy to forget that. He’s asking big questions without answers, and when one gets stuck in a rut like that, well, the chances of coming out with a cheerier outlook are slim. But that’s where these songs come in. They’re a total release for Wolf, his band, and anyone who happens to listen and can’t help but be washed over in that wave of understanding. It’s not inaccurate to say that the album seriously considers mortality. Living and dying are weighed on equal scales for the first two-thirds, each seeming as peaceful and viable as the other. But there’s a dilemma in that. That black hole shows up again and Yoni Wolf stares into the very depths of it hoping to take some answer, any answer, away from it. It’s here that Alopecia finds its unified harmony.

Listening to his warbly plea in “Simeon’s Dilemma,” it’s clear Wolf has found what he was looking for. Maybe by the time the recurring refrain (“While I’m alive/ I’ll feel alive”) shows up again in “By Torpedo or Crohn’s,” even those slow to the draw will have picked up on the hints. Rest assured that it hits you in the chest like a mass of energy torpedoing through space and time: “WHY?” was a damn good question to ask." [Tiny Mix Tapes]

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Saul Williams "The Inevitable Rise And Liberation Of NiggyTardust!"

Artist: Saul Williams
Album: The Inevitable Rise And Liberation Of NiggyTardust!
Label: Musicane
Release date: 1 November 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Hip Hop/Experimental
RIYL: Sage Francis, Aesop Rock, Nine Inch Nails

---

Tracklisting:
01. Black History Month
02. Convict Colony
03. Tr(n)igger
04. Sunday Bloody Sunday
05. Break
06. NiggyTardust
07. DNA
08. WTF!
09. Scared Money
10. Raw
11. Skin of a Drum
12. No One Ever Does
13. Banged and Blown Through
14. Raised to be Lowered
15. The Ritual
Total running time: 59' 19"

---

[Saul Williams - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"There's two novel ideas at work behind this album, but only one of them's getting much attention. Trent Reznor has been pretty upfront recently about his general disdain with the way the music industry works, encouraging concertgoers to share his music and going public with his irritation at the cost of his own CDs. It became apparent once Reznor parted ways with Interscope that he'd be looking for a new business plan that would circumvent your garden-variety industry bullshit. All it took to set a solid-enough precedent was Radiohead's pay-what-you-want model for In Rainbows-- after that, the "try it for free; pay $5 if you like it and you get to download higher-quality audio files" plan for the new Saul Williams album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! was enough to get some attention all by itself.

But the other novel idea, being overlooked in lieu of the distribution plan, is the album's stylistic approach. Saul Williams, despite being more of a straight-up poet than an MC, is one of those rare artists who justifies the notion of a hip-hop/rock interchange in a post-nu-metal world. His aggression is focused, pointed, and self-aware enough to avoid falling into temper-tantrum emptiness, and it's backed by music that focuses on the aesthetic slipperiness of heavy rock's capabilities. After 2001's Rick Rubin-produced Amethyst Rock Star and his self-titled 2004 record (featuring guest spots from Zack de la Rocha and Serj Tankian), it isn't a shock that Williams paired up with Reznor for this new album-- especially considering Saul's opened for Nine Inch Nails on more than one tour over the last couple of years. But to hear Williams' firebrand rhetoric about black identity delivered over an album filled with punk and industrial undercurrents-- and to hear Reznor infuse those undercurrents with moments of hip-hop inspiration ranging from Southern bounce to straight-up Public Enemy tributes-- is eye-opening.

As for whether it results in an entertaining record, well, that probably depends on whether you like to be less comfortable going out of an album than you are coming in. There's plenty about the production for NiggyTardust! that makes it initially accessible-- opening track "Black History Month" makes like a drumline facing off against skyscraper subwoofers; there's a touch of Timbaland gone malicious in the supple but abrasive electro-bounce of tracks like "The Ritual" and "Break"; there's even a semi-faithful cover of U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" stripped down to the rhythm and augmented with flashes of buzzing synth. But those moments don't sustain or define the album as much as the anxious, creeping-tension moments do; apparently Trent put together the bulk of NiggyTardust!'s beats with the ingredients he left out of Year Zero for not being immediate enough. The slow-grower songs, like the Boards of Canada soundalike "No One Ever Does", the sleepy, minimalist, dying-808 pulse of "Raw" and its clangy, semi-organic counterpart "Skin of a Drum", mostly act as rhythms for Williams' voice to ricochet off. And even when the production gets intense (the post-rock-vs.-Neptunes clamor of "Convict Colony"; the classic Downward Spiral-isms of dirge "Raised to be Lowered"), Saul's voice still acts as the dominant instrument-- wailing, murmuring, jousting sneeringly with his own overdubbed voice, and even veering fascinatingly close to Reznor's own stylings; credits notwithstanding I'm still not 100% convinced it's not actually Trent singing on "Banged and Blown Through", which attests to Williams' versatility as a singer.

In a sort of simultaneous downside and necessity, Williams' lyrics tend to be a bit opaque and evasive, dodging the straightforwardness that many of his ideas demand even if his voice shapes them into something heavier. Sometimes, they're too busy asking questions to account for all the possible answers: PE homage "Tr(n)igger" brings up a familiar but crucially unnerving theory ("would Jesus Christ come back American/ What if he's Iraqi and here again?") only to drop it after a disorienting barrage of unclear "where will you be when the revolution starts" rhetoric.

Then there's tracks like "Black History Month" ("I'm taking my spot, nigga, I ain't afraid to be me/ Sometimes I find it very hard to be/ Who? Me") and "Scared Money" ("I swear, I used to pray to change back the year/ When niggas spoke of motherships with space helmets for hair/ Well, now what have we here? Thugs and poets, ah yeah/ What we seem to have in common is we're common as air") which address the need to find a place for the foreign and the unreal in a hip-hop culture concerned with regionalism and realism. The songs, however, have so many layers of language that the core message is a bit hard to grasp. Yet making the listener work doesn't necessarily make for a bad record, just a challenging one, and since NiggyTardust opts to leave the easy answers in the margins, its more resonant lines skew toward the kinds of uncomfortable accusations and introspective examinations that are both difficult and important to mull over. Yeah, the pricing's fair, but it's not the five bucks you have to worry about-- it's your full attention. It might be harder to focus on this record than it is to actually put down money for it; but to get anything out of it, you've got to pay into it." [source]

[Kudos to Zitoun for this one!]

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cLOUDDEAD "Ten"

Artist: cLOUDDEAD
Album: Ten
Label: Mush
Release date: 16 March 2004
Genre: Electronic
Style: Hip Hop
RIYL: Why?, Themselves, Subtle

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Tracklisting:
01. Pop Song
02. The Keen Teen Skip
03. Rhymer's Only Room
04. The Velvet Ant
05. Son Of A Gun
06. Rifle Eyes
07. Dead Dogs Two
08. 3 Twenty
09. Physics Of A Unicycle
10. Our Name
Total running time: 56' 58"

---

[cLOUDDEAD - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

---

[cLOUDDEAD - Live in LA]

"Sigmund Freud believed that dreams are the window to the soul, and if we are to believe his theory, every action of our waking lives has been previewed, at one time or another, in our unconscious state. Though the good Doctor Freud was, by all accounts, a bit of a mental furball and a confirmed coke addict, Bay Area surrealists cLOUDDEAD seem to exist solely to quantify his hypothesis; their illusory psychedelic hip-hop simply couldn't come from anywhere but the unconscious, because the manner of blind purity in which they trade simply doesn't exist in any other realm, particularly the media-tainted recesses of the modern consciousness.

Anticon collective members MC Adam "Doseone" Drucker, MC/multi-instrumentalist Joni "Why?" Wolf and producer Dave "Odd Nosdam" Madson stand at the forefront of hip-hop's avant garde, loquacious dreamers who value love and beauty, diamonds and guns. While they all have successful solo ventures (and other high-profile collaborations in Wolf (Hymie's Basement) and Drucker's (Themselves) case) under their belts, the mysterious magnificence they conjure on Ten is truly unlike anything else you'll hear this year, hip-hop or otherwise -- unless, of course, you're originally from Jupiter.

Ten strikes a counterbalance between the bizarre and the vulnerable. For every stunning dust-collage like "3 Twenty", there's a gut-wrenching line like "A murder of mosquitoes, moths, and gnats ravage the fluorescent flickering ribs of a motel lot floodlight / their frantic trajectories perfectly sketching insane on its halogen corona", or a slow-motion serenade to fallen revolutionaries like "Son of a Gun". Sometimes, as with "Dead Dogs Two", cLOUDDEAD's art is painfully beautiful -- Wolf and Drucker battling it out like slurred circus freaks over a funereal dirge of wheezing synths and kettle-top beats -- while at other intervals, such as the status quo-baiting "Pop Song" and the semi-autobiographical "Rhymers Only Room", they remain the very definition of boho cool, all cryptically self-deprecating lyrics and samples so willfully obscure as to be utterly fashionable.

When they set loose a stampede of glacial synths and martial cadences on "Physics of a Unicycle", they aren't merely trying to replicate Boards of Canada's pastoral beauty. They have a more benevolent agenda: like scruffy soothsayers with complicated Leonard Cohen fetishes, they seek to give speech to those without mouths, vision to those who lack eyes, and most importantly, sound to those without ears. They're not divine by any means, but cLOUDDEAD are much like the figures Freud saw in his own dreams --misunderstood minstrels in a land where mediocrity is valued over original ideas, and where the unfamiliar is often dismissed as the byproduct of lunacy.

Those with the time and patience allowed for Ten to fully incubate in their brains will be rewarded with music so mind-warping that it won't truly be appreciated for thirty years. Shallow souls looking to it for a quick hip-hop fix will find little besides confusion and derision within Ten's clouded walls." [source]

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V/A "Histeresis"

Artist: V/A
Album: Histéresis
Label: Filtro
Release date: 28 May 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Glitch/Ambient/Hip Hop/Ambient Techno
RIYL: Murcof, Fax, Xela, Telefon Tel Aviv, Prefuse 73

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Tracklisting:
01. El Lazo Invisible "Ella Hablabla En RGB"
02. Meiker "Naranja (That Nostalgic Feeling)"
03. Bifidus "Sinking Downwards In Dire Ruin (F.SS)"
04. Insecto "Miternu"
05. Rivel "Back Again"
06. Subnor "Dodekafucked"
07. Emmerichk "Maquiventa"
08. Absolute Time "Photon"
09. AAM "Bad Japanese Movie"
10. Zofa "Cycles"
11. Manziping "Despues De Usted Señor"
12. Kampión "Dreamy Snapshot"
Total running time: 67' 08"

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"We have come to our 20th release in a similar way as in our beginning like a label: establishing a panoramic view of things in minimalist and glitchy electronics produced in an independent context. Histéresis is a drawn trajectory framing intimate and atmospheric set ups to urban beats, flirting in some moments with an alternative dance floor.

Our Release begins with the post digital whisperings from “Ella hablaba en RGB”, of El Lazo Invisible:.."she only speaks RGB, in 3 channels, in front of a screen continuously available.-You have 3 options –she used to tell me, morning is a nice colourful vector".. Like a natural flow, Meiker paints this release with the colours of a warm evening with his track “Naranja (That Nostalgic Feeling)”. We arrive to last thoughts of the day sonic textures with “Sinking downwards in dire ruin (f.ss)” a Bifidus’ track that like his previous work, gives a sound to that state between being awake and being asleep. Insecto from Chile, situate us inside an arena where rhythmic collapses, textures and microscopic melodies clash between themselves.

Rivel, with “Back again” gave us one of his best tracks to date: an undersea dubby garden with paths that bifurcates at unison into his own very logic. "Dodecafuced" by Subnor is a very cinematographic IDM that constructs an imaginary short-film with perfect timing. Emmerichk with "Maquiventa" also forms a narrative with true contemplative thoughts in constant transitions to new forms. AAM with “Bad japanese movie” place us in the middle of a cluster of textures that works as a camouflage to rhythms floating under a dense residual scheme. Zofa in cycles makes display of his ability to leave us in the middle of a field of unsolved tensions that unease the listener. "Photon" by Absolute time is a piece that searches getting away from the minimal as we know it and make us sigh a little bit for the nineties.

Histéresis nearly finishes with Manziping, our friends from Chile. “Después de usted señor” hides within its gentle title a store formed with beats, bass assaults and some problems with catching a radio signal, all of this over an atmosphere which, like some climatic variations, warns us from things to come. Kampión, the man that has changed the FACE of Mexican hip hop forever, closes with “Dreamy Snapshot” an impressive collaboration between MC Domer and digitally corrupted hip hop champion.

Filtro is back!" [source]

[Kudos to Robot for this discovery.]

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Four Tet "Remixes"

Artist: Four Tet
Album: Remixes [2CDs]
Label: Domino
Release date: 25 September 2006
Genre: Electronic
Style: Breakbeat/Hip Hop/Downtempo/Nu Jazz
RIYL: Prefuse 73, Pedro

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Tracklisting:

Remixes
01. Lars Horntveth "Tics" [Four Tet Remix]
02. Radiohead "Skttrbrain" [Four Tet Remix]
03. Madvillain "Money Folder" [Four Tet Remix]
04. His Name Is Alive "One Year" [Four Tet Remix]
05. Sia "Breathe Me" [Four Tet Remix]
06. Aphex Twin "Untitled (SAW2 CD1 Track1)" [Four Tet Remix]
07. Madvillain "Great Day" [Four Tet Remix]
08. Bonobo "Pick Up" [Four Tet Remix]
09. Rothko "Roads Become Rivers" [Rivers Become Oceans - Four Tet Remix]
10. Beth Orton "Carmella" [Four Tet Remix]
11. Bloc Party "So Here We Are" [Four Tet Remix]
12. Pole "Heim" [Four Tet Remix]

Remixed
01. A Joy [Feat. Percee P]
02. As Serious As Your Life [Jay Dee Remix]
03. Hilarious Movie Of The 90's [Manitoba Remix]
04. Hilarious Movie Of The 90's [Koushik's Funny Flic]
05. A Joy [Remix]
06. My Angel Rocks Back And Forth [Icarus Remix]
07. A Joy [Battles Remix]
08. As Serious As Your Life [Remix]
09. A Joy (Feat. Percee P) [Koushik's Quick Mix]
10. Sun Drums And Soil [Sa Ra Creative Partners Remix]
11. No More Mosquitoes [Boom Bip Remix]

Total running time: 122' 52"

---

[Four Tet - And Then Patterns - Unofficial Video Clip]

"Four Tet Remixes is split into two discs, one devoted to Kieran Hebden's own remixes and another to remixes of his work done by his friends. It’s a concept that attracts a certain level of curiosity, for it reveals not only what influences Hebden and how he chooses to reconstruct them, but also flips the tables and does the same for his peers.

Hebden has been quite prolific as a remixer, providing new takes for musical acts that have diversified as he has evolved. Beginning with instrumental post-rock in Fridge, his first group, the past few years have also found him incorporating more genres and styles into his work, from hip-hop and jazz to world music and electro. The first disc of remixes succeeds primarily because it demonstrates his listening range and how he cleverly applies various styles of music to his heroes, all while creating soundscapes that are undoubtedly his own.

On the hip-hop front, Four Tet includes two of his five Madvillain remixes, one of which is the outstanding version of "Great Day," where ringing guitar and crashing drums change it from a casual jazz reflection to a cathartic triumph. For the ambient stylings of Aphex Twin's "Untitled," he chooses to redo it as dreamy drum n' bass, while Radiohead's "Scatterbrain" (here titled “Skitbrain”) uses wobbly xylophones, tumbling electronic drums, and clicks and cuts to augment the lulling guitar figure of the original. Even the post-rock and bedroom electronica artists that informed Four Tet's early works receive intriguing second takes. Rothko's "Roads Become Rivers" is fashioned into graceful melancholy, employing plinking acoustic guitars and a somber piano loop.

It’s too bad that the second disc doesn't offer nearly the same cohesion, fascination, or quality of the first. Whereas Four Tet's remix work discloses a multi-dimensional, intricate palette of soul and harmony, his colleagues present lazy, flat, and inferior interpretations of their source. The four remixes of "A Joy," comprising a third of the disc, all cleave too closely to the blueprint, taking three tries before a combination of Percee P's guest appearance and a slightly dissimilar beat by Koushik finally avoid repetition. The two most high-profile associates of Hebden, Jay Dee and Caribou, offer up remixes, but they were both created earlier in their careers, so they lack any of the innovation or attention to detail of their more recent output. Both fail to be especially interesting, with Caribou sticking to the placid-but-pleasant IDM of Start Breaking My Heart and Dilla doing essentially a Common beat for Guilty Simpson. The rest of the remixes fall into similar patterns—most sounding entirely too much like the originals, as if they didn't know how to do it any better.

Throughout his career, Four Tet has come off as one of the nice guys—an artist with a lot of friends. This much is obvious by the amount of remixing work he’s done here—and had done to him by others. That said, Four Tet Remixes would have benefited greatly from Hebden putting his foot down: making it a single disc and proving his relative artistic superiority in the remixing arena. As it is, the album is one disc—and about ten dollars—too much." [source]

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Mike Ladd "Negrophilia"

Artist: Mike Ladd
Album: Negrophilia
Label: Thirsty Ear
Release date: 25 April 2005
Genre: Electronic
Style: Nu Jazz/Hip Hop

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Tracklisting:
01. Field Work (The Ethnographer's Daughter)
02. The French Dig Latinos, Too
03. In Perspective
04. Shake It
05. Worldwide Shrinkwrap (Contact Zones)
06. Back At Ya
07. Appropriated Metro
08. Blonde Negress
09. Sam And Milli Dine Out
10. Nancy And Carl Go Christmas Shopping
11. Sleep Patterns Of Black Expatriots Circa 1960
Total running time: 47' 38"

---

"This characteristically conceptual and adventurous album from Mike Ladd isn't exactly Negrophilia -- Petrine Archer-Straw's book that deals with Parisiens' fascination with black culture during the 1920s -- brought off the page and placed onto wax. The book is more of a jump-off point than anything else. Its ideas are referenced, examined, messed with, expanded upon, and dusted off to make natural modern-day parallels. Ladd's lyrics are only sprinkled throughout, often conjuring striking images that tie the themes of Archer-Straw's writings to the present: "Brancusi sculpting Beyoncé in gold lamé/Blonde negress"; "Boxing in Montmartre/Disco with a Hottentot"; "Every day the land we lay looks more and more like L.A./From Dakar to Harare/Bangkok to Taipei." Ladd takes greater liberties with the instrumentation, provided by key collaborator Vijay Iyer (keys), Guillermo E. Brown (drums, electronics), Bruce Grant (tape loops), Andrew Lamb (winds), and his niece Marguerite (winds). The playing is considerably transformed by his chop-ups. Sizeable seams in the interwoven fragments are audible, but not to the point where it all seems disjointed just to be unnervingly difficult. On "Blonde Negress," clipped brass notes are spit out like poison darts, only to be deflected off a rubbery drum loop and juiced-up synth interjections. "In Perspective" is relatively laid-back, the closest the album gets to carrying a standard groove, but it remains ill at ease with faint atmospheric gauze and bracing audio-collage samples from what sounds like news broadcasts and documentaries ("... the police came and beat him half to death and gouged his eyes out"). This is one of Ladd's most accomplished albums to date, proving once again that he's one of the most forward-thinking artists around. He doesn't always come up with genius-level work, but his output is consistently fascinating, worthy of both deep analysis and a deeply felt physical reaction." [source]

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Prefuse 73 "Preparations & Interregnums"

Artist: Prefuse 73
Album: Preparations & Interregnums [2CDs]
Label: Warp
Release date: 15 October 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Hip Hop

---

Tracklisting:

Preparations
01. From The East Intro
02. Beaten Thursdays
03. Aborted Hugs
04. The Class Of 73 Bells [Feat. School Of Seven Bells]
05. Girlfriend Boyfriend
06. Smoking Red [Feat. John Stanier]
07. Prog Version Slowly Crushed
08. Noreaster Cheer
09. Let It Ring
10. 17 Seconds Interlude [Feat. Tobias Lilja]
11. I Knew You Were Gonna Go
12. Pomade Suite Version One
13. Spaced + Dissonant
14. Preparation Outro Version

Interregnums
01. For Her Non-Place
02. Preparation One
03. Thorough Light
04. Spacious And Dissonant Part 2
05. Pitu
06. Preparation Two
07. Over Ensembles
08. The Last
09. Sunbeamstress
10. Humidity Interlude
11. The Ground We Lift
12. Preparation Three
13. Let It Ring Ensembles
14. Out We Will Go
15. Prepared As It Was

Total running time: 98' 14"

---

[Prefuse 73 - The Class Of 73 Bells - Video Clip]

"Since 1997, Guillermo Scott Herren has shuffled masks, personas, whatever you deem to call it, across albums. He composed angles of himself in tidal flats of bent circuits, guitars, electric steam, and vocal samples stretching from gossamer wistful to Def Jux righteous. Critics and writers call it “cut and paste” because they see the ProTools and laptop and landscaped terraces of drone and chirp.

But these are personal campaigns. The commitment to mask shuffling has given him time to decide on purpose, or, rather, purposes. Savath & Savalas, for instance, has become a way for him to explore the music of Catalonia (Herren was born to a Catalan father and a half-Cuban, half-Irish mother). And Prefuse 73 is his avenue to prod the closed dome of hip-hop with a caustic presentation (meticulously furious) of something (electronic music) it’s had an already fraught relationship with since its formation.

He began his work as Prefuse 73 on 2001’s Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, a still remarkably composed, if a little too rhythmically fettered, experiment in production. He asked: could hip-hop beats go beyond the ‘90s Virginia naked Prince tinfoil into realms where the 1-1-2 break beat skeleton would be the only recognizable song component for hip-hop fans?

2003’s One Word Extinguisher made it personal: Prefuse took the break-up album synthetic and hip-hop ready. Sonic pikes buried in sixteenth notes, bristle with lovers lockjaw rage for a half minute. And then the next track, all rage forgotten, the album sliding into untitled song after untitled song, opened valves exhaling lattice worked hums and sighs.

It’s as emotional as I’ve ever heard electronic music and it’s one of my favorite albums of this young millennium. I am not ashamed to say I was guided by it through college, depression, drugs, airports, various steppes and marshes and city streets.

And now, after the collaboration fascination piece, 2005’s Surrounded By Silence, and the 2006’s “not a real album” Security Screenings, Herren is a full time European. He is living in Barcelona, settled, and a father. I won’t play psychologist here (though, being the son of one, I’m damn near ready to), but his latest, Preparations reeks of comfort and assurance. It is prompt and controlled, a fine entry not just for Prefuse, but for the whole catalog of Herren.

The anchor and compositional theme for Prefuse is deliberate on Preparations, more explicit here than anywhere else in this particular persona’s catalogue: featherweight snares and bass pounding out Prefuse’s first loyalty—the 4/4 boom-bap of South Bronx. Quite literally, these are the breaks.

Wario grimaces may gild the lilies on “Noreaster Cheer,” but the roots are kick-snare. Even when the song opens into oxygenated smiles, the heartbeat remains. “Girlfriend Boyfriend” plays with nipped male vocals, digital squibs, and rippling drums. It, like all his songs, is a sonic analogy of Australian Aboriginal dot art: only three or four chroma, but punctuated and resequenced so rapidly that the audience has the illusion of platoons of tone.

At fourteen songs, all tied together in rhythm (even the smorgasbord “Pomade Suite Version One” could have its basic beat knocked out on a ratty yard sale kit), the album is palatable, a fine starting point for any Prefuse newcomers, but with enough range, and self-referential range at that (try, Extinguisher vets, to listen to Preparation’s “I Knew You Were Gonna Go” and not have “90% Of My Mind Is With You” ushered back to your skull) to keep weathered fans satisfied. And that’s a good emotion. There’s less challenge in Preparations, not necessarily less at stake, just less, perhaps, to brood on. Prefuse 73 sounds freer, and yet more deliberately formal—most of the songs break down like classic hip-hop does, two-thirds of the way toward the end.

The last time I reviewed Herren’s work I was prickly enough to say he was in a rut. Clearly that is no longer the case. Even though no art is ever a solo mission, for an artist and man who has so willingly explicated his own passions and outputs into the four winds and brought them together again, I think it’s only fair to appreciate what is, for now, a man in full." [source]

[Kudos to IDM Trade for the Preparations link.]

[Link removed at the request of the label.Buy]

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Bonus: Megachopped Suite
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Pedro "You, Me & Everyone"

Artist: Pedro
Album: You, Me & Everyone
Label: Rogue/Mush
Release date: 10 February 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Nu Jazz/Breakbeat/Hip Hop

---

Tracklisting:
01. Intro (Asleep)
02. I Am Keeping Up
03. Hellalujah
04. There Will Always Be More
05. Spools
06. Lung
07. Green Apples
08. Red Apples
09. Nothing But Pebbles
10. Hope Is A Happiness
11. Vitamins
12. Sound Song
13. You, Me & Everyone
14. Outro (Awake)
15. Slowly
Total running time: 52' 07"

---

[Pedro - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"Yet another folktronic artist wishes it to be known that he’s not making that stuff anymore.

James Rutledge inaugurated the Melodic label with a vinyl release as Pedro some years ago, and put out a superlative self-titled album that was one of the pinnacles of the folktronica “genre” (such as it is/was). The new album’s been a long time coming, although we had Early Pedro to tide us over, collecting his post-rock beginnings and the very fine collaboration with Kathryn Williams, reminiscent of Beaumont Hannant’s work with Lida Husik in the ’90s given a glitchy overhaul.

It’s hard not to use the word “reminiscent” with Pedro, and no doubt avoiding the folktronica tag is probably all about not being called “just another Four Tet”. It’s a bit strange (and no doubt coincidental) then that with the energetic hip-hop/breakbeat and freak-folk that adorns most of this album Pedro has managed to take much the same trajectory as Four Tet took out of his own folktronic territory. Rutledge is following his own musical tastes and influences, and it’s a shame that it hasn’t quite saved him from “sounds like”. Bright jazzy samples and bouncy hip-hop beats mean that this album fits the mould of his new home at Mush Records a little more perfectly than one might wish considering his earlier efforts. Presumably “reminiscent of Prefuse 73″ will get quite a look-in now too (mostly better than, to these ears).

That said, this is really lovely stuff. There’s a lot to take in over the album’s length, and it’s got plenty of the detailed production that was required in successful folktronica. The beats are upbeat and compelling, and if the layered saxophones get a bit much for me sometimes, there are also some great touches like the reversed time stretched melodies in the earlier part of “Spool”.

It’s really the horns that make this album something else, and if jazzy freaky saxophones, ’70s jazz flutes and the ubiquitous xylophone are more your thing than they are mine, you’ll probably want to drop everything and grab this album. I wish they were more mine too, but as it is I’m nostalgic for the pianos, orchestral bits and generally more subdued feel of the earlier Pedro (although I do dig that drum programming!)

There’s some of that here - like the Múm-like ‘Nothing But Pebbles’, marred by unnecessary glissando-ing analogue synths. I find myself gravitating more to tracks like the very Four Tet-like ‘Hope Is A Happiness’, nice strings and head-nodding beat, or the beautiful title track. The Four Tet comparisons might also be the monkey on the back of a track like ‘Vitamins’, which could easily come from Everything Ecstatic, but again the horns and woodwind take it in a slightly different direction. It’s worth remembering that the album’s a kind of dream narrative, because the arrangements here are deliberately off-kilter, contrasting with the almost techno impetus of the drumming. There’s nothing that new here, which is a shame considering that the Pedro album was such a highlight, but it’s extremely well done and will certainly earn Pedro many deserved fans." [source]

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Luke Vibert "Chicago, Detroit, Redruth"

Artist: Luke Vibert
Album: Chicago, Detroit, Redruth
Label: Planet Mu
Release date: 16 July 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Acid/Techno/Drum 'n' Bass/Hip Hop

---

Tracklisting:
01. Comfycozy
02. Brain Rave
03. Radio Savalas
04. Breakbeat Metal Music
05. God
06. Clikilik
07. Argument Fly
08. Rotting Flesh Bags
09. Comphex
10. Rapperdacid
11. Chicago, Detroit, Redruth
12. Swet
Total running time: 63' 00"

---

"A true veteran of the UK electronic scene, Luke Vibert has, in the last few years, finally gained the recognition he deserves. His first dispatches saw him go from the ambient textures of his debut album as Wagon Christ to a much more acute and varied sound, infused with hip hop, soul, electro, techno, acid house and drum’n'bass. Distilled under a variety of pseudonyms (Wagon Christ, Plug, Kerrier District, Amen Andrews, Spac Hand Luke to name but a few) these have progressively become the staple diet for his fans. Yet, it took for the man to focus on one of his until-then somewhat overlooked strengths, acid, with his monumental YosepH (Warp, 2003) for the world, or at least electronic followers, to finally take stock and listen.

This second album for long term friend Mike Paradinas’s Planet Mu imprint branches out more than its predecessor, Lover’s Acid (2005) by incorporating, beside healthy servings of acid house and classic techno, decent helpings of drum’n'bass (Comfycozy), groovy hip-hop and trip-hop (Rotting Flesh Bags, Swet) and classic electronica. And as if to get his point across right from the start, it is with the bip-bop-infused drum’n'bass groove of Comfycozy that Vibert chooses to open the hostilities. All the way through, Vibert jumps from one genre to the next with disarming dexterity, effortlessly clocking mile after mile of dance floor mayhem without ever breaking into a sweat.

From the playful Speak’n'Spell assault of Breakbeat Metal Music and the heavy groove of Clikilik to the hypnotic Argument Fly, the slightly sombre Rotting Flesh Bags or the closing Swet, on which he spills library music all over an incendiary funky rhythm, Vibert gathers beats and grooves, stuff them with acid squelches and warm bass lines and delivers an extremely convincing collection of fresh and imaginative electronic pieces.

The standards rarely drop at all here, and despite the wide range of genres forming the core of this record, Chicago, Detroit, Redruth is surprisingly consistent. Fans of Wagon Christ will be as much as ease as those who prefer Vibert’s more purely dance floor orientated incarnations. It may take a few listens to truly appreciate the breadth and reach of this album, but the reward is well worth the effort.

Vibert was never a front-of-house master, at least in the early years. Often found circling in the background of more flamboyant friends, Paradinas included, his versatility was sometimes mistaken for a lack of particular focus, but he has proved the most reliable of long distance achievers as he continues to deliver slices of beats and grooves with insistent regularity. A truly hedonistic collection, Chicago, Detroit, Redruth is undoubtedly one of his strongest releases to dates, and it is incidentally also one of the most entertaining records released this year." [source]

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Modeselektor "Happy Birthday!"

Artist: Modeselektor
Album: Happy Birthday!
Label: BPitch Control
Release date: 10 September 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Techno/Electro/Hip Hop/Acid/Glitch

---

Tracklisting:
01. Godspeed
02. 2000007 [Feat. TTC]
03. Happy Birthday!
04. Let Your Love Grow [Feat. Paul St. Hilaire]
05. B.M.I.
06. EM Ocean
07. Sucker Pin
08. The First Rebirth
09. The Dark Side Of the Frog [Feat. Puppetmastaz]
10. The Dark Side Of the Sun [Feat. Puppetmastaz]
11. Black Block
12. Edgar
13. Hyper Hyper [Feat. Otto Von Schirach]
14. Late Check-Out
15. The Wedding Toccata Theme
16. The White Flash [Feat. Thom Yorke]
17. Déboutonner [Feat. Siriusmo]
Total running time: 69' 40"

---

[Modeselektor - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"Ellen Allien's BPitch Control is one of Germany's more eclectic dance-music labels, firmly rooted in the dark Deutsche techno sound but constantly stretching beyond. Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary of Modeselektor, arguably the label's most celebrated artists aside from Queen Ellen, mark the arrival of their second album with an even broader range of beats than what was displayed on Hello Mom!, their 2005 debut.

Techno-influenced dubstep, grime, and breaks abound on Happy Birthday! alongside some interesting guest vocalists. Opener "Godspeed" takes a dancehall riddim and adds grimey bass and techie synths, setting the tone for an album's worth of cross-genre juxtapositions. Not too far removed from U.K. grime, entries like "2000007," featuring French hip-hoppers TTC, and "The Dark Side of the Sun," featuring the Puppetmastaz, border on cheese only because of their proximity to hip-hop's often silly British sibling. Still, the Selektors' rhythms keep things interesting, and the slower tempo ends up putting the tunes somewhere between the hyperspeed of the English sound and the jiggy grooves of current U.S. hip-hop.

The album's title track actually sounds like some Balkan gypsy jam from the twenty-fourth century, and a pair of dance-floor destroyers that could sound at home on Ed Banger Records makes sure that all bases are covered. Even the few deeper cuts, including a collaboration with Thom Yorke that sounds like an outtake from Eraser, can't help but break up the beats and keep the album from dipping into straight techno. There's a ton going on in every tune, so you can listen intently for the multitude of hidden bits and bobs or simply rock out to the crunchy breaks. The duo has managed to make an album to please both the blogging music nerds and the hipper club-hopping set.

Their influences are obvious, but Bronsert and Szary never rest in any one style. Although many deejays bring a variety of sounds into a single set, these guys have taken things a big step further and crammed multiple genres into each song. They even make dubstep danceable, and deserve quite a bit of credit for that." [source]

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Kim Hiorthøy "My Last Day"

Artist: Kim Hiorthøy
Album: My Last Day
Label: Smalltown Supersound
Release date: 5 November 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Nu Jazz/Hip Hop/Breakbeat/Techno/Acid

---

Tracklisting:
01. I Thought We Could Eat Friends
02. Beats Mistake
03. Skuggan
04. Album
05. Same Old Shit
06. Den Långa Berättelsen Om Stöv Och Vatten
07. Alt Går Så Langsomt
08. Goodbye To Song
09. Wind Of Failure
10. Hon Var Så Otydlig, Som En Gas
11. I'm This I'm That
Total running time: 44' 56"

---

[Smalltown Supersound - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

---

[Kim Hiorthøy - Alt Måste Bli Anorlunda - Video Clip]

"Norway's Kim Hiorthøy is not only regarded as one of the most exciting graphic designers in the world today (he has been on the cover of Creative Review, Grafik and Eye, and many more) - he is also an acclaimed musician and producer. "My Last Day" is his long-awaited follow up to his seminal and critically hugely acclaimed "Hei" album from 2000.

Since then he has also released the 2002 album "Melke" (a collection of remixes, 7 inches, rejected tracks and tracks for compilations), several 7 inches and 12 inches as well as his three EPs in 2004: "Hopeness", "Live Shet" (a live recording) and "For The Ladies" (a limited edition collection of field recordings). Since his debut album he has also toured the USA, Europe and Japan several times, as well as a tour in China.

Extraordinarily talented and expressive, Kim Hiorthøy operates in many different fields in addition to music. As a graphic designer he is responsible for the Rune Grammofon artwork, as well as most of Smalltown Supersound’s artwork. He is also an artist (check out www.standardoslo.no for more information about his art) and a writer. Kim wrote the book "Du kan ikke svikte din beste venn og bli god til å synge samtidig" on Norwegian literary publisher Oktober Forlag. He has released a book of photography in Japan, a book of drawings, Alt Fins, and a design book, "Tree Weekend" on Die Gestalten Verlag in Germany. Additionally, Kim has illustrated several children’s books, and has worked in film as a photographer, having shot the acclaimed Norwegian movies “Kroppen Min” and “Ungdommens Raskap”, as a video director for the concert film “Supersilent7”, and as a filmmaker, having just debuted as a director/screenwriter with the Swedish/Norwegian co-production, ”Hur Man Gör”.

Kim Hiorthøy is based in both Berlin and Oslo, but has mostly lived in Berlin over the last couple of years. He has worked on "My Last Day" on and off throughout the last two years; most of it was recorded at his Berlin studio. Compared to "Hei", the new album is less fragmented and more song based. It is also more melodic and complete, all with Kim’s characteristic sound. He often has an organic and folk-like tone to his music which XLR8R magazine recognized when they placed him in the forefront of the new electronic folk music movement with artists such as Herbert, Matmos and Four Tet. Kim Hiorthøy’s music draws influences from folk, jazz (his live sets these days are with free-jazz drum virtuoso Paal Nilssen-Love), lo-fi/leftfield electronics, acid, hip-hop, field recordings and samples. All his music is created on an MPC sampler, the original hip-hop instrument. The use of the MPC also makes Kim’s live performances much more physical than the often mundane laptop live sets in electronic music.

The music and everything else Kim Hiorthøy creates has his own unique and strong signature - that Kim Hiorthøy feeling, you might call it. On “My Last Day” Kim Hiorthøy continues to create great electronic pop music all in his distinct way and style, and all in his very own universe." [source]

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Hexstatic "When Robots Go Bad"

Artist: Hexstatic
Album: When Robots Go Bad
Label: Ninja Tune
Release date: 2 July 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Electro/Big Beat/Funk/Hip Hop/Tech House

---

Tracklisting:
01. Red Laser Beam
02. Roll Over [Feat. Sabirajade]
03. Tokyo Traffic
04. Freak Me [Feat. B+]
05. Prom Night Party [Hexstatic Remix]
06. TLC
07. Move On [Feat. Profisee & Ema J]
08. A Different Place [Feat. B+]
09. Subway [Feat. Profisee]
10. Lab Rat Interlude
11. Newton's Cradle
12. Newaves
13. Bust
Total running time: 50' 07"

---

[Hexstatic - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

---

[Hexstatic - Roll Over - Video Clip]

---

[Hexstatic - Pulse (Dance Mix) - Video Clip]

"The dynamic duo, Hexstatic, return to the fray with "When Robots Go Bad," their finest album yet. Taking their electro obsession to greater heights than ever before, "WRGB" finds Robin Brunson and Stuart Warren-Hill mashing up sounds and influences in search of the ultimate machine groove.

From first track "Red Laser Beam" they lay out their wares - crunching guitar samples, huge drum box beats and enough synths to drown a nation beneath a sea of (sine) waves. It's such a euphoric opening that it's hard to imagine how they can keep the pressure up. First single "Roll Over" quickly lays any fears to rest. Featuring new vocal find Sabirajade, this is a swinging groove of heavily-layered keyboards and soulful, sultry vocals. "Tokyo Traffic" takes the tempo up again for an acidic, glitchy, serialist pop-locker of a tune that just about makes sense of the term "future-retro". "Freak Me" features B+, a female MC from Oz, who effortlessly rides a more minimalist, sexy, funky riff. Continuing the sexy theme, "Prom Night Party" is a complete re-work of a classic 'lost' track from Mike Ladd's "Majesticons" project. Electronic ode to love "TLC" gives the boys an opportunity to take the tempo right down, whereas "Move On" (featuring Edinburgh MC Profisee) starts to drive us forward again. B+ returns on "A Different Place", a floating electronic groove that shows she can do much more than rap. "Subway" is another tune for a new generation of breakers, Profisee offering a paen to underground music inspired by the forced fears of a nation. From "Lab Rat" onward the vocoder takes over - "Newton's Cradle," "Newaves" and the superb "Bust" offering an object lesson in the contrasting ways in which synths and drum boxes can be used to create superb, funny, funky, driving dance music." [source]

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El-P "I'll Sleep When You're Dead"

Artist: El-P
Album: I'll Sleep When You're Dead
Label: Definitive Jux
Release date: 20 March 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Hip Hop/Rap

---

Tracklisting:
01. Tasmanian Pain Coaster
02. Smithereens (Stop Cryin)
03. Up All Night
04. EMG
05. Drive
06. Dear Sirs
07. Run The Numbers
08. Habeas Corpses (Draconian Love)
09. The Overly Dramatic Truth
10. Flyentology
11. No Kings
12. The League Of Extraordinary Nobodies
13. Poisenville Kids No Wins / Reprise (This Must Be Our Time)
Total running time: 55' 06"

---

[El-P - Flyentology - Video Clip]

"There’s a moment on “The Overly Dramatic Truth,” the ninth track of El-P’s brilliant sophomore effort, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, when the Brooklyn-born Jaime Meline doesn’t sound like any of the writerly influences critics typically pigeon-hole him with. It doesn’t remind me of Philip K. Dick. Or George Orwell. Or Aldous Huxley. Or [insert your favorite dystopian chronicler here]. It reminds me of the classic work of another great Brookyln-reared artist, Woody Allen.

In particular, “The Overly Dramatic Truth” and its warning to an unnamed younger woman kept reminding me of the scene in Manhattan where an already 40-something Woody Allen lectures a teenage Mariel Hemingway about how she’s absolutely forbidden to fall in love with him. And it’s not beyond a simple stretch of the imagination to picture the bespectacled Woody, flailing his arms around a well-decorated but small apartment, stealing El-P’s words verbatim, claiming: “This is not my ego talking / I know I’m no perfect draw / And I do love the way you lay there / I like the way we talk / Maybe I’m just condescending / Maybe this thing isn’t wrong / Maybe you should lay right there.”

Granted, El-P’s aesthetic isn’t exactly a laugh riot. I mean, the guy did once release a tour-only LP entitled the We Are All Going To Burn in Hell Megamix (which was outstanding, by the way). But onstage he’s arguably one of the funniest MCs around. The albums might be Woody Allen at his most Interiors-bleak, but get Aesop Rock and Mr. Lif around El, and you get something approaching Bananas. And if you wanna talk paranoia, these two heavyweights can go pound-for-pound. Sure, at dinner with Annie Hall’s family, Woody imagines that her Norman Rockwell-painting kin sees him as a bearded Orthodox Jew. But El-P’s double-vision approaches his landscape with images of “cars slidin’ by with the boomin’ system / Like New York is Fallujah with metal-gear-using Christians.”

With I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, El-P has created a masterpiece, a record both explicit and subtle, simultaneously political and apolitical, a record for a turbulent schizophrenic time where gruesome headlines from Iraq sit side-by-side with news of the Dow skyrocketing and Anna Nicole Smith corpse-raping (give them a minute). Heavily rooted in his NYC cityscape, El dips jittery, a “Brooklyn baby / Waterlocked, walkin’ nervous” with a “gonzomatic fear turning [him] Hunter S. Thompson.” Or to put it in the more Allen-esque terms of the fifth track, “Drive”: “I’m not depressed. I’m just a fuckin’ New Yorker who knows that sittin’ in traffic with these bastards is torture.”

The knock on El-P is that he’s the epitome of “nerd rap.” Or, as one of my Stylus colleagues described it, “fucking spaceship plinky plink sampling accordions and rapping about depression rap.” And granted, like many Def Jux records, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead is monolithic and impenetrable on first listen. But with patience and time, its lyrical complexities and Bomb Squad by way of My Bloody Valentine sound grows increasingly more vivid. And in truth, those easy labels just aren’t true. At its core, it’s very much a hip-hop record, with its cavernous booming drums, golden-age worthy story-telling, tightly constructed rhymes, and schemes more intricate and refined than those found on Fantastic Damage.

Ultimately, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead displays a type of artistic growth almost alien to the genre. In hip-hop, artists rarely mature, they just get old and cranky, tossing off nebulous boasts about being “old-school,” or shallow braggadocio about making grown-man rap). El-P is too smart to let his evolution speak for himself. The younger, brasher El-P of five years previous said he’d rather “get mouth-fucked by Nazi’s unconscious” than sign with Rawkus. He titled songs “The Nang, The Front, The Bush, and the Shit.” Now he’s more apt to offer abstract images, like the sci-fi burner “Habeus Corpses (Draconian Love),” which paints an allegorical tale of El and Cage as Abu Ghraib-like guards on a futuristic prison ship.

Allen once said that “life is divided into the horrible and miserable,” and while his words reek of overstatement, it’s not hard to find them somewhat poignant at a time when you can’t open up your newspaper without reading about a never-ending war, a corrupt Attorney General, and a spy-cover-blowing Vice President. It might not be as silky-smooth as a Joplin soundtrack, but the poisoned purity of I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead is no less poignant—a rhapsody in bleak." [source]

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RJD2 "Deadringer"

Artist: RJD2
Album: Deadringer
Label: Definitive Jux
Release date: 23 July 2002
Genre: Electronic
Style: Hip Hop

---

Tracklisting:
01. The Horror
02. Salud
03. Smoke & Mirrors
04. Good Times Roll, Pt. 2
05. Final Frontier
06. Ghostwriter
07. Cut Out To FL
08. F.H.H.
09. Shot In The Dark
10. Chicken-Bone Circuit
11. The Proxy
12. 2 More Dead
13. Take The Picture Off
14. Silver Fox
15. June
16. Work
Total running time: 59' 12"

---

[RJD2 - The Horror/Ghostwriter/Smoke & Mirrors - Live @ Beta Lounge]

"“OK, this is the first record I’ve made under my own name...Some of the stuff I like very much...I can’t decide which piece to start with, so I won’t start with any of the pieces, I’ve already started, I hope you like what you hear.”

It’s a British accent that speaks out on the second song of RJD2’s solo album, Deadringer, but it’s a voice that, like many on the album, speaks for RJD2. In fact, a better title for the “instrumental” album might have been Deadsingers — there’s a surprising Moby-esque reliance on large vocal samples taken from what sound like early blues and funk recordings that act as less as backdrop samples than they do as lead singers (though some voices fade-to-back on some tracks, as in the Soul Position—RJD2 and Blueprint-track, “Final Frontier,” which showcases a softer production than Blueprint has ever laid down for himself, one that works extremely well, and makes me excited to hear the complete project). This makes it rather hard to listen to the album as an instrumental piece, which is a surprising departure from the expectations created by the June 12” and his appearances on Def Jux Presents II.

However, that does not mean in any way that the album is lacking the signature RJD2 sound. Still present are the sweeping change-ups and near-flawless drums, as well as the epic scope in many of the songs. Indeed, Deadringer might be better understood as an introduction to a new (more complete?) RJD2, or at least a first look at other facets of his personality as a producer. Songs like “Ghostwriter,” with its quiet guitar loop and more understated drums, are certainly different than what we’ve heard from RJD2 before, but it is a track that will leave your head bobbing for hours afterwards as it seeps into your subconscious with a layered second guitar riff, horns, and a unadorned chorus of voices (though about three minutes in, RJD2 fucks with the drums in that way that has made him such a favorite amongst those in-the-know—and one of URB’s Next 100 of 2002— simple beautiful work that induces breathlessness if you listen closely).

Joining Blueprint as guest emcees are Jakki da Motamouth (on “F.H.H.”) and Copywrite, on “June,” (released earlier this year as a 12”). The original version of that song appears here, with its long delay between the two verses, which works well on an “instrumental” LP like this one. Overall the track continues to impress, more so than the Motamouth joint, which features a not-overly-imaginative Jakki talking shit about the internet heads and anticon-like kids in a way that has become just as played out in the last two years as the old anti-mainstream rants.

Towards the second half of the LP, on songs like “The Chicken-Bone Circuit,” RJD2 moves back more towards his signature sound, the darkly stunning samples paired with drums that seem to insist upon taking the lead rather than fading into the background. There is even an extended drum-solo on that song, reminiscent of (free-?) jazz improv, which for me at least is a first on a hip-hop track.

In the end, RJD2 comes full-circle, moving through the familiar “June” to the final track, “Work,” which returns to a leading blues vocal sample. The album manages to impress overall, despite an unexpected turn in RJD2’s production and a few lackluster songs. It will be interesting to see how the public reacts to this piece of music by RJD2, and whether everyone that’s been excited about his work since the June 12” will be pleased with the new D2." [source]

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Kid Koala "Your Mom's Favorite DJ"

Artist: Kid Koala
Album: Your Mom's Favorite DJ
Label: Ninja Tune
Release date: September 2006
Genre: Electronic
Style: Turntablism/Hip Hop

---

Tracklisting:
01. Left Side
02. Right Side
Total running time: 33' 32"

---

[Kid Koala - Moon River remix]

"Kid Koala has always remained something of an outcast in the ballsy world of the turntablist. Where his peers measure their genitalia by showing how quick they can scratch or how many records they can blend in three minutes, Eric San aka Kid Koala has been more interested in assembling naaratives. This might not have him lavished with gold chains and serious hip-hop credibility but it has built around him a legion of fans desperate to hear anything to emerge from his gifted hands. I’m guessing that this is where he got the rather strange album title from, it’s the sort of hip-hop music you might play to your dear old mother and she might raise a smile rather than grimace at the state of modern music, San injects a genuine element of slapstick, a light heartedness into his eclectic compositions and that’s what makes his music so popular. His last full length album was accompanied by a comic-book also penned by San, showing further his eagerness to give narrative to the music, to write small stories linked together by the strangest of seams and this latest record picks off where he left off. Although there’s no book to help us this time around, the narrative is stronger than ever with movie samples (I heard ‘Gremlins’ in there for certain…) chopped over old rock ‘n roll, jazz, ragtime and world music to create a listening experience that is hard to compare to anyone else. I think the humour and nature of ‘Your Mom’s Favourite DJ’ is best compared to San’s most acclaimed record, the genre-defining ‘Carpal Tunnel Syndrome’ which was similarly pieced together. There are no ‘big tracks’ and hardly any moments when you get so absorbed to be humming a riff or stray melody, rather you listen from beginning to end as you would watch a film or read a book and the more you listen the more detail you can hear. You’re unlikely to hear anything else like this until the next Kid Koala record, and I’m pleased to say he’s on better form than ever, mum’s the word!" [source]

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Subtle "For Hero: For Fool"

Artist: Subtle
Album: For Hero: For Fool
Label: Lex Records
Release date: September 2006
Genre: Electronic
Style: Hip Hop

---

Tracklisting:
01. A Tale Of Apes I
02. A Tale Of Apes II
03. Middleclass Stomp
04. Middleclasskill
05. Midas Gutz
06. Nomanisisland
07. The Mercury Craze
08. Bed To The Bills
09. Return Of The Vein
10. Call To Dive
11. The Ends
Total running time: 50' 59"

---

[Subtle - The Mercury Craze - Video Clip]

"Based on anyone's criteria, the past couple of years haven't been good for Oakland-based sextet Subtle - with a horrific tour-bus accident leaving one member (Dax Pearson) quadriplegic and the rest understandably shaken by the experience. Yet rather than signal the end of Subtle, this incident seems to have galvanized their resolve; with new album 'For Hero:For Fool' a stunning diktat of their collective talent and vision. Rendered in 20/20 vision throughout by some soopa-crisp production values, 'For Hero:For Fool' will appeal equally to those with a pronounced Subtle addiction and newcomers alike thanks to the bands ability to ingrain lofty ideals into a whole which is mellifluous to the max. The nearest they've ever come to translating their breathless live show onto record, 'For Hero:For Fool' centres its attention on the formidable verbal skills of Adam ‘Doseone’ Drucker; a vocalist who can slip seamlessly from helium rant to jerky solipsism without breaking sweat. On his own there Doseone would no doubt be engaging, but ensconced amongst Subtle he's nigh on irresistible. With members culled from all over the Anticon family, Subtle open on the lunging electro and cluster-f*ck beats of 'A Tale Of Apes I' and 'A Tale Of Apes II'; wherein Dose's fierce vocals clatter into the ruff rhythms to create a thoroughly exhilarating kick off. From here, things calm down a little - and by the time 'Midas Gutz' rears into view they are sounding like a hard-boiled version of 13 & God - albeit with all the Subtle faculties intact. Elsewhere, 'Bed To The Bills' is a Rick Rubin esque clatter of drums and guitar that dips into West Coast psych-pop mid song, 'Return To The Vein' is a poignant cloud of synths and swirling melodies, whilst 'The Ends' closes with a Dax specialty; gorgeous keys and cavernous atmospherics everywhere. For all those who've liked bits and bobs from Subtle in the past but never fully subscribed, this is the record where they get coherent. Pity the fool!" [source]

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