BEATS with Dan Rule
Published: Music Australia Guide #79, August 2010.
Baths
Cerulean
****1/2
Though clearly a record of the laptop era, there’s a rare, indelibly human quality to LA kid Will Wiesenfeld’s debut under the Baths moniker. Among Cerulean’s sea of instrumental nuances, shoe-gaze textures and atmospheres, wonky beats and rhythmic structures are some of the most pure, heartbreakingly beautiful melodies you’ll hear. Cuts like Maximalist and Animals see swirlings choir of diced vocal fragments shatter into a clouds of static; tracks like Hall and Plea make for swooning, angelic pop ballads of the highest order. This is an undisputedly postmodern work by kid who’s an old romantic at heart. In a word, stunning.
Anticon/Stomp
Jimmy Edgar
XXX
***1/2
Jimmy Edgar’s hometown is in his blood. The precocious young Detroiter makes music anchored to the pillars of first generation techno, pre-1985 hip hop and bombastic, sexed-up synth funk. That’s not to cast his second longplayer XXX, which follows electric 2006 debut Color Strip, as a purely retrospective affair. Indeed, Edgar’s slick, propulsive synthetics owe just as much to the agile beat structures of IDM and driving groove of contemporary club-based hip hop. It’s a kinetic, tantalising mix. The only issue here is with Edgar’s churlish, sexualised lyrics. Indeed, so obsessed is he with the ‘bedroom arts’ that it almost becomes a heavy-breathing distraction.
!K7/Inertia
Giggs
Let Em Ave It
**1/2
Hype can be a voracious beast, and UK hip hop’s latest rapper-du-jour Giggs is well and truly lodged between its jaws. Second solo record Let Em Ave It has been one of the most hotly anticipated joints to come out of the post-grime environment. Unfortunately, that doesn’t defuse its flaws. The main problem is Giggs’ much talked about delivery. While there’s a lot to like about the record’s narrative thread – an at times moving, council estate rags-to-riches tale – Giggs’ deep, husky drawl is void of personality and his lumbering rhyme-schemes tend to deflate even the more engaging of lyrical details. The UK’s answer to Fiddy Cent may well have arrived.
Remote Control/Inertia
Skryptcha
The Numbers
****
If there’s one thing that The Numbers says about its author, it’s that he is a student of the golden era. Part of an impressive new generation of Sydney MCs, Skryptcha has crafted an uncannily mature debut here. From the unassuming downbeat groove of Jase-produced opener Good Music, this is a record without bluster or hyperbole. Skryptcha lets his agile mic skills and ear for a hook do the talking. For a kid so young, his beat selection – the stabbing funk of M-Phazes and Domingo’s lush, soul-drenched orchestrations included – is impeccable. Forget short attention spans; Skryptcha is here for the long haul.
Obese
Autechre
Move of Ten
****
Less than six months after 10th longplayer Oversteps melted Autechre’s highly abrasive rhythmic clusters into a melange of dense atmosphere and arcane melodic gesture, the UK’s seminal pair of abstract electronic architects explode back onto the airwaves with a new full-length rippling with muscular beats and rhythmic details. Indeed, Move of Ten is about as beat-focused and even hip hop-like as Sean Booth and Rob Brown have been for some years. But the key to this record is balance. Where stuttering, angular rhythms threaten to dominate, the tonal and melodic qualities that marked Oversteps mould Move of Ten into a shape all of its own.
Warp/Inertia
