| Across six sides of vinyl, this a brilliant collection of progressive hip-hop is in much the same vein as the mighty Ozone, Anticon, Dálek, and Antipop Consortium, and just as good. Showcasing forthcoming full-length releases on the Mush label, over thirty artists represent here, and if some of the names are unfamiliar now, I suspect many of them won't be for much longer. There's a cribsheet of helpful information included, listing a whole bunch of other pseudonyms, collaborators, and groups for each artist here - the hip-hop scene is getting as creatively promiscuous as post-rock, it seems. This is good news when the artists concerned are as talented as those on show here. There's contributions from So-Called Artists with their "Postmodernist Contemporary Existentialist Binary Anthem," featuring some finely-turned rolling drums; Jel's short but sweet Sesame Street treat "Stop (and Listen)"; Aesop Rock, Lulu Mushi, Dj Signify, the pedestrian, Fat Jon and the Five Deez, Radioinactive, Nickodemus featuring Apani's thumb-piano-led Africa-baroque rock, Dj Osiris, Mr. Dibbs, Labtekwon; Boom Bip featuring Slug and a killer bassline to boot(y), Revolutionary Ink featuring Doseone on "Inventors Cry" - a smoky stew of processed vocals, sub-bass, phased African percussion, and crackling space. Phew. Interestingly, several of the artists here employ gamelan loop, African drums, and other "exotic" percussion, or Bernd Friedmann-esque crackles as samples, lending a richer, deeper feel to the sounds - opposing the cultural dominance of the funk sample is but one indication of the radical methods at work here. Of course, fat bass and heavy duty beats still emerge, and they're as smartly, tightly, funkily deployed here as anywhere. What strikes though, is the brilliant, open-minded, questing innovation on show - the flamboyant skill and dutifully-researched almost musicological knowledge of the contemporary Dj, combined with a keen musical intelligence, and largely remaining true to hip-hop's turntable/sample-based conception (as opposed to another other possible future for hip-hop - studio-based sound creation - being projected with equal conviction and skill by people like Mike Ladd and Antipop's E-Blaize). The finest work, breathtaking in its slightly-crazed ambition, is Reaching Quiet's "113th Clean." A great sweeping epic of a track, in five parts (at least), with various shouty vox/raps laid over numerous collaged samples, it feels somewhat like the Babylonian sequence from a sprawling, ill-conceived Hollywood remake of DW Griffith's Intolerance (probably starring Marlon Brando, Sylvester Stallone, David Thewlis, and transported to Cuba, for instance), but somehow, against all odds, it turns out to be utterly compelling, convincing and, well, awe-inspiring. Reaching Quiet seems to be composed of two blokes named why? and odd nosdam. Ours is not to reason why?, ours is just to enjoy his bonkers, witty, delivery. However, described as "a real Dr. Strange of sampling," it's odd nosdam's freeform splatterfunk collage which arrests. Totally brilliant. As is pretty much every track here. Effortlessly revolutionary, as much through the musical content as the lyrical content, Ropeladder 12 is utterly fantastic. - Motion |
3XLP/Out Of Print