Aesop Rock, Rob Sonic, Busdriver

February 19, 2013 • A&R Music Bar, Columbus, Ohio

Yeah, yeah, concerts two days in a row. Not something I'm going to get into a habit of anytime soon, but this was easily an exception. It wasn't quite as good as Monday's show, and it wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped in general, but it was still a pretty good time.

Busdriver

I barely know anything about Busdriver, aside from that he's a very eclectic artist in the hip hop world, and that definitely proved true here. I was pretty impressed by his set: just two tiny samplers provided a large array of both minimalistic and very noisy beats. And he's quite the talented vocalist; his rasta-style singing was decent and he spits like no other—if I thought Aesop Rock was a fast rapper, Busdriver is some other league. The forty-five minute set got a bit taxing, and maybe even a bit repetitive, but it was by no means a bad show.
6 • Most Exquisite Haircuts Award

Aesop Rock / Rob Sonic

I didn't expect them to go on at the same time, but it made things move a bit faster so that was nice. I was unaware that they have a group now (with the DJ who backed them up, Big Wiz), so the setlist was a pretty even mix of Aesop Rock's material, Rob Sonic's, and the group's (Hail Mary Mallon). Unfortunately this meant that I didn't even recognize half of the songs they did, which kind of undercut my enjoyment of the set a bit. Still, it was great to hear Aesop do some of the better Skelethon tracks and a few older ones as well, including some of my favorites like "None Shall Pass", "No Regrets", and "Pigs". The sound itself was horrible, though—you would be lucky to hear the beats aside from the super-heavy basswork, aside from DJ Big Wiz's (admittedly good) solo set. It made it hard to tell what they were even playing most of the time. Overall, though, the show was decent; not one of my favorites but it was still pretty fun.
7 • Best Use of Entertaining Backdrops Award

Aesop Rock – Skelethon

July 10, 2012 • Rhymesayers Entertainment

There'll always be a special place in my library for Aesop Rock; after all, he's the reason I listen to hip hop, and Labor Days and None Shall Pass are still two of my favorite hip hop albums ever. So naturally I was pumped as hell for Skelethon, almost to the point where I knew the real thing couldn't live up to my expectations. Well, it did. Somehow he's completely outdone himself and Skelethon just might be his best yet.

First of all, what the hell has Aesop Rock been doing hanging out with Blockhead all this time? Not that the tracks Blockhead produced on his older albums were bad—far from it—but Aes' beats are killer through and through, and he finally has managed to put out a full album of entirely his own production instead of the odd track here and there. The end result is awesome. It's not too different from his older stuff; it has lots of rock samples (check the catchy-as-hell guitar lick on "ZZZ Top"), very ethereal-sounding synth effects, hard-hitting drums... It still sounds very much like any given Aesop Rock album, and the production is still going to appeal to anyone who enjoyed his older stuff, but here it's simply so much better in every way. It's tough to describe exactly what's going on here, but there's a definite atmosphere going on through the whole of the album—I don't want to say it's necessarily "dark", but it's definitely darker than None Shall Pass and almost melancholy in places ("Zero Dark Thirty", "Gopher Guts"), the kind of mood I already love. It's like he's deliberately playing to my tastes. The album isn't without Aesop Rock's silly and fun humor, though, as there is a small handful of much more upbeat tracks to balance things out ("Racing Stripes", "Grace").

His rapping is the same as always—rapid-fire abstract word salad which I've always been pretty ambivalent about—although it seems like his rhythmic skills have improved quite a bit. Maybe it's a side effect of making his own beats and being able to tailor everything to himself better, but he's constantly meshing his vocal rhythms with the beats which makes everything feel more unified. His older stuff often felt like the beats and rhymes were made completely separate and just mashed together later (which wasn't always a bad thing) but Skelethon feels more deliberate, and it feels great.

As usual, I don't really pay attention to the lyrics, but from the bits I catch here and there he's the same as ever. The artfully-descriptive "Ruby '81" reminds me a lot of Labor Days' "No Regrets", one of its better tracks because of its lyrics. So that's a good indicator, if nothing else. (But I'm not one to talk about lyrics, really, so I'll leave it there.)

The only misstep on the album I can even think of might be the female vocalist on "Crows 1" and "Racing Stripes"; I feel like she interrupts the album in a way and it's a bit jarring (and she's not very good, either). Those tracks (and "Crows 2") mark the inevitable middle-of-the-album slump but gladly it's not much worse than the rest of Skelethon (the great beats on "Racing Stripes" help) and it picks back up just fine afterwards—just about every other track on the album is really good, with maybe just one or two tracks total I'd cut if I had the final choice (and they're not even that bad).

I hardly need to restate how much I'm enjoying this album—but better than Labor Days? It's entirely possible. I'm not sure yet; it needs more time to sink in, but I will say the five-year wait from None Shall Pass was absolutely worth it. If, in another five years, we get another album that's as improved on its predecessor as this one was, I just might wet myself.

8

Special bonus: The whole album up on YouTube! Thanks Rhymesayers, you're the best.

El-P – Cancer 4 Cure

May 22, 2012 • Fat Possum Records

Five years is a long time for a musician, and I imagine it feels even longer in today's incredibly volatile hip hop scene. I'd all but forgotten about El-P besides occasionally spinning I'll Sleep When You're Dead some years ago, but it sounds like he made those five years count and has been keeping up with the crowd.

Consequently El-P's production style has changed quite a bit since I'll Sleep When You're Dead—Cancer 4 Cure has really futuristic-sounding beats with unusually-fast tempos and tons of densely-packed samples. It's a lot more chaotic than its predecessor and always sounds like it's running as fast as it can to get to the next section, bludgeoning the listener into submission on its way. It's a very unique experience, although it's more or less in line with the direction hip hop has been taking this decade into more electronic and avant-garde areas. It's not at all surprising to find El-P doing this.

It's hard to discuss the beats as there's just so much to them—pitched vocals, hardcore drum beats with an occasional Southern twist, dissonant techno melodies, and samples from anywhere and everywhere, like El-P just overturned a vat of pop culture onto the album. It works, too, though the usage of the occasional pop or dubstep-ish beat is, while interesting, sometimes out of place.

Cancer 4 Cure manages to be nicely consistent throughout, so odds are if you are loving one track you'll find the rest to be just as enjoyable. Personally I'm finding the majority of the album to be simply decent, though there are a couple definite standout tracks. In addition to three great closing tracks, "Tougher Colder Killer" is probably my favorite, with its '90s throwback samples combined with some really great heavy beats and guest spots.

Speaking of which, the guest spots in general are very well done; El-P seems to have picked some rappers whose voices contrast well with his own, so every performance is memorable. I don't know who any of these other guys are, but they do a pretty fantastic job.

Better than I'll Sleep When You're Dead? Debatable. Better than most hip hop I've heard from the last few years? Absolutely (though that's not to stay it doesn't have its contenders). Even though this isn't really one of my favorite hip hop sounds (I generally prefer a more laid-back approach than this rapid-fire sound) El-P has definitely created something his fans will certainly enjoy. I'm liking it myself, and even if I'm not totally enthralled, he's not going anywhere just yet.

6

Curse ov Dialect – Wooden Tongues

September 19, 2006 • Valve Records

I have a bad bias when it comes to hip hop: If it wasn't made in the early-to-mid '90s in New York or released on Stones Throw, it's probably not worth my time. But then one of the best, and weirdest, albums crossed my ears all the way from Australia, often one of the last places I think of when it comes to good music. It has actually been quite an eye-opener for me since I still haven't grasped just how vast and diverse hip hop can get.

Now, granted, Wooden Tongues is not for everyone; it's very idiosyncratic and often just plain weird, but at the same time it's a hell of a lot of fun. Just about the only thing it has in common with "normal" hip hop is heavy drum beats, so the other elements sound very alien. The sampling is very avant-garde, using all sorts of different sources: operatic singing (that I mistook for a flute the first time around), campy pop, cartoon music, prog folk (but when you sample one of my already-favorite albums, Comus' First Utterance, I can't help but see it as a godo thing), chamber music, weird sound effects, bits of noise, the list could go on. The beats jump around a lot, going from one mood to another so abruptly it's often easy to think that a completely different song has started playing for no reason. The album consists almost entirely of moments like that, and usually it works a lot better than I would think since for the most part the beats are good enough to make me forget that the song structure is so inconsistent.

But this isn't always the case, as some of the sampling just simply doesn't work well and falls flat. Case in point: "Jokes on Me" has the famous opera vocals for the main sample during the verse, but when the song moves to one of the many bridges the beats are just bad and the samples sound really out-of-place, completely ruining the cool moment preceding. Fortunately these moments don't happen too often; most of the time they are pretty tasteful ("Word Up Forever" is a bit cheesy but done well; "Bury Me Slowly" has the Comus sampling throughout and is therefore great; "Broken Feathers" has this great sad-folk thing going on which is also really nice).

The rapping is mostly delivered in a heavy Aussie accent with some impressive rhythms and syncopation. It did take me a while to get used to the accents but I have to say it works okay. Not great, but I guess it fits with the rest of the weirdness. There are several (three or four?) people doing vocals on the whole, which keeps things interesting and everyone brings their own mood, although most of the accents are so think (to me) that it's impossible to tell what the lyrics are. (I usually don't care about lyrics, so I'm okay with that, but for some people it's a turn-off.) Additionally some of the vocals are plain terrible, like the middle third of "Bird Cage Alert" which just sounds like gibberish (is it Aboriginal? who knows?) There are also some bad attempts at singing, but throughout the album there are some great bits of rapping that outshine the bad parts, mostly one of the vocalists in particular who gets a lot of mic time but less than he deserves (the one who closes out "Bird Cage Alert"). Although, admittedly, I'll still take American rapping over Australian any day.

As much as I adore this album it does have plenty of flaws with the occasional bad beats and bad vocals, but when it succeeds, it becomes some of the greatest music I've heard, and there is so much good material on the album that the bad stuff is easily overlooked. Again, it's not for everyone, especially with the accents and erratic sampling giving it a near-plunderphonics sound, but in the end it's just a fun album and deserves more recognition. I don't think I've heard anything else quite like it.

8