I had nearly forgotten: this is one of my favorite things ever.
Or at least the past year.
In late 2010 this clip from a July 23 concert in Los Angeles was posted and I realized how much of an incredible force of nature Miguel Atwood-Ferguson is. Flying Lotus fans know him as the guy providing the string arrangements in the legendary album Cosmogramma, while those more familiar with J Dilla probably smile at the thought of his work as headliner of the Timeless: Suite For Ma Dukes album, a sweeping orchestral take on the late James Yancey’s productions. This 13 minute alchemic beast weaves a stargazing intro from the former into one of the sparkling highlights of the latter’s final statement, the Ruff Draft EP, into an uplifting, hard charging masterpiece.
Truly an all star production, this band includes none other than Flying Lotus himself, Thundercat (best known for 2011’s Golden Age of the Apocalypse and making Cosmogramma jump like frogs in a dynamite pond), Rebekah Raff (another Flylo alum, she of the Alice Coltrane-worthy harp ethereality) and a full set of accomplished musicians I’ll list below.
Flying Lotus (laptop)
Miguel Atwood-Ferguson (violin)
Evan Francis (flute)
Dontae Winslow (trumpet)
Joey Dosik (alto sax)
Kamasi Washington (tenor sax)
Garrett Smith (trombone)
Rebekah Raff (harp)
Marcel Camargo (guitar)
Brandon Coleman (keys)
Stephen ‘Thundercat’ Bruner (bass)
Chris ‘Daddy’ Dave (drums)
Nikki Campbell (percussion)
I’m just hoping this hints, if not at Flying Lotus‘ next album (which will be announced at Coachella) perhaps a collaborative effort or even a full length release from this Ensemble itself.
In this first post of 2012 I proudly present my unabashedly belated yet wholeheartedly enthusiastic response to a slice of sound that has not only dominated my listening time for months but brightened my outlook for an important piece of the future of music.
Black Up is one of the best hiphop albums I’ve heard all year (the year being 2011 but it doesn’t matter), possibly longer. I slept on this at first, honestly, because the name just seemed too hipster, too pitchfork, too much. I pictured a thousand chillwave and witch house bands lined up behind triangles and crosses, a sea of stoned faces, limpid whitewashed guitar and anonymous lazy beats. I pictured nothing interesting or worthy of my time, much less my money. I did not picture something this fucking good.
When most people think of a hiphop artist the vocals come first: style, cadence, and timbre to subject matter and storytelling. The sheer blunt force of the words themselves, inseparable from voice, embodies a delivery system of surface and substance. Crushing the underground binary of either transcending or subverting this natural order, Shabazz Palaces blow hair back with pointillistic dexterity and canny substance while folding the vocals into the dreamlike puzzle box instrumentation itself. Beatific slides like “It’s a feeling, it’s a feeling!” and “Clear some space out, so we can space out” are amplified by the very way they emerge through cloudbusting moments of clarity in the mix. The production is the most intricate and interesting I’ve heard in an impossible stretch of time. Huge and futuristic and swarming like Cannibal Ox (one of my all time favorites) but delicate and minimal in places, sometimes in the same song. Relentlessly kaleidoscopic on a track-to-track basis like Madvillain and equally playful. Taking each second as an opportunity for left turns, trap doors, and extraterrestrial launches like the best Flying Lotus material. I’m uncomfortable reducing this experience to references but they help paint a picture. Thrilling, gorgeous, head nodding and hypnotizing, worthy on its own as pure sound yet never subsuming the oft-poignant vocals, the meaning of Black Up is delivered fresh and phonetic, kinetic, poetic. I sink deeper, hearing more each time. Romantic, political, angry, meditative, militant, optimistic, futuristic, this blurs free-association and laser focus in the same moment, words and sounds in the same experience.
The duo of Ishmael Butler, of classic conscious/jazz-hop group Digable Planets (listen if you possess even a passing interest in A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharcyde, or Del La Soul; they’re probably better) and multi-instrumentalist Tendai Maraire (of whom I’ll be honest: I have no idea where he came from), is an alchemy I’ll forever thank Sub Pop (of all labels) for bringing to my ears.
My first favorite track.
Possibly the most direct distillation of the group’s ethos, with an outright nod to the original Digable Planets album in its ascendant coda.
The full album streaming free with visuals on youtube. Nice.
I should be so bold as to say that this is the equivalent of Disco Inferno (a longtime favorite of Optimistic Underground) for the hiphop galaxy. I don’t state this lightly. I also do not often insist so fully on a vinyl purchase but in this case I must spread the word on its inner beauty: the package does not resemble the semi-anonymous visual you’ve seen floating around the internet and the top of this post.
[pick this up viaSub PoporAmazonorInsoundorUndergrounghiphopand thank me later for helping you find one of the least recognized masterpieces of the past year or so]
Oneontrix Point Never is set to unleash another album to be considered as a ‘true debut’ next month. One (very productive) year after the epochal Returnal (Best album of 2010), Daniel Lopatin is ready to declare his creative ambition and lay waste to expectations, eardrums and frontal lobes all over again. Having excised his synth pop demons with a quirky and catchy Ford & Lopatin album and collaborative impulse on the exquisite, under-heard FRKWYS Vol. 7 – starring drone psych dream team Borden, Ferraro, Godin, Halo & Lopatin – he was ready to dive headlong into the depths of his inner muse, dredging up something distinctly next-level with Replica.
The range and variety of sounds incorporated here will likely jolt those familiar with his major releases, Returnal and Rifts, as nearly every track strays from the expected drifting keyboard clouds and laser light workouts haunting those works. Returnal hinted that things were getting stormy inside the OPN environment, most notably on opener Nil Admirari‘s volcanic eruption of beauty and brutality, before the album subsided into an occasionally hairy yet blissed out ride for its duration. It was made to be lost in, all thought muscled out in service of a meditative nothingness from which I’d emerge thoughtful and cleansed. But the translation of Latin phrase Nil Admirari, “to be surprised by nothing,” was perhaps more mission statement than anyone guessed, because Replica aims not only for novel horizons but an entirely new mode of conveyance itself.
Instead of the aural equivalent of a hurricane, this album begins with an invitation to slide. Nearly reprising the sighing contentment of last year’s Ouroboros, opener Andro lays back and lets gravity work magic as we’re led to believe this will be a less demanding journey than last time. Perfectly mirroring the chaotic intro dissolving into sleepy rivers on Returnal, Lopatin opens a trapdoor with distortion, tribal percussion and shattered vocals; snapping from the reverie, he unveils the dizzying, fractured realm inside. Sudden, repeating sample blasts of urgent words (“Up!”) and unintelligible phrases snowball into rhythms, gurgling under warm baths of electronic bass, giving way to flights of pornographic radiance. Delicate piano and wordless oohs-and-ahhs sparkle through as aggressive syllabic papercuts urge the dynamic tranquility, keeping the listener on his toes. Every moment of repose is punctuated, every hair raising sequence actively hunting the next surprise around a blind corner
Instead of suppressing the violent energy and gorgeous destruction after one controlled burst, Replica seeks peace, balance and eager dance partners in its propensity for noise and serenity. Transcendence is the natural offspring of this marriage and feels all the more hard-won and treasured. Instead of dissolving and blurring out the unpleasant realities of the world, Oneohtrix Point Never now finds a way to reconcile the righteous and beatific experience of life with the windows flung wide. If Returnal is a night spent alone in meditation, Replica is the morning’s journey into the uncharted future, heart and mind open to the mysterious possibilies ahead.
So you may be nodding your head with sublime abandon, smiling at the overtly direct lyrics, precious vocals and selfconsciously 1980’s production sensibility while the song plays. If not, I’d wager that you have yet to see one of the best films of 2011, Drive. There’s a certain neck-hair-raising context this song is placed into…
The story of a quiet stunt man who moonlights as a getaway driver, caught up with affection for a woman who melts his stoic edge, sacrificing his safe routine for the good of others has been done. Director Nicolas Wending Refn not only spikes this coulda-been-warhorse recipe with wincing violence and tender detail, but cuts through the surface coolness to reveal the messy desire, motivation and reason behind the action and reaction. In other words, we’re shown something any hack can make cool and slick, boiled down to – and built up from – the frail humanity from which is grows. In simplest terms: it’s a thriller done goddamn RIGHT for once. And the music is superb.
Living within minutes of the most exquisite record shop around – the fabled aQuarius Records – lends a handful of advantages to my evergreen quest for new music. Each time I step inside, I hear something infectious on the PA; more often than not it is truly new to me. Last time, The Natural Yogurt Band set the stage for intrigue.
Before 2011, I had heard one Destroyer album, Your Blues. I recalled a very baroque yet earnest ballad named The Music Lovers, and nothing else. I thought of Dan Bejar (the sole permanent member) as part of an indie pop milieu I haven’t found interesting in years. Thankfully, Destroyer changed and I was wrong. Kaputt is a utopian vision of space-age late night electronic jazz pop.
First I’ll mention the atmosphere: as lush as a Ferrari made of diamonds, parked near a waterfall… bathed in the neon glow of some not-too-distant future. Every reverb-laden trumpet blast and bright synth line feels magnified, submerged in the liquid cool of Kaputt’s immaculate production. Some have mentioned the album conjuring memories of the 80s and I can’t disagree; I think it’s more to do with the painstaking detail of the recording than any genre the band nods toward. It was a time, after all, when ambitious pop albums were a slightly more common sighting.
If you’re familiar with Miles Davis‘ monumental Bitches Brew, you’ll have some idea of the tone and color the omnipresent trumpet takes on as it darts through the album from beginning to end. Muted and echoed at godlike levels, it’s an apparition as much as a driving force. Accenting and elevating the songs, highlighting the utopian feel, it’s a major aspect in cementing this sound in memory. Another is Bejar’s voice. With a deliver both earnest and cool, his affecting lyrics take impressionistic flights spiked with lump-in-throat moments which remind us: he’s not just our tour guide on this twilit adventure, he’s sharing the story of how we got here.
This chilled out, slickly psychedelic album is polished pop of the highest order. Crackling with an energy and intricacy unheard of in Bejar’s (former) circles, it unapologetically stands out with a crystaline picture of a time we’re not living in. For me, it’s the future. I’m sure this has something to do with my upbringing in the aforementioned decade; this is how the future was supposed to sound then! You may hear the past. Either is a fantasy wholly worth inhabiting.
If you’re like me, you may need more assurance that this isn’t the tired indie pop you may expect (or fear) it to be. So try this:
On second thought, everyone watch that. One of the most original, thrilling, and straight up funny music videos I’ve seen in a long time. 80’s girls with wet hair, desert mirages, and flying whales! Wow. That just made me like this even more. Anyway…
[you can get this straight from label merge, or even at amazon]
Optimistic Underground 