December 30th, 2008 11:41am
Hot As The Earth’s Core
Black Milk featuring Colin Munroe “Without U”
When people bitch about “haters” holding them back, it’s easy to be suspicious and wonder if they’re just egomaniacs who cannot handle any form of criticism, or if they are actually dealing with toxic, negative people who are genuinely undermining their happiness and creativity. In the case of “Without U,” I’m inclined to feel that Black Milk was actually dealing with the latter. This could easily be an excessively bitter and angry song, but mostly, he just sounds relieved and eager to move on. Even if this were an instrumental, the light, airy bounce of the track would still express that feeling of a weight lifted off of one’s chest.
Buy it from Amazon.
Flying Lotus featuring Dolly “RobertaFlack”
The critical success of this Flying Lotus record comes as something of a surprise, at least in the sense that I didn’t realize so many of my peers were eager for new iterations on trip-hop. As an album, Los Angeles is comforting and functional background music — it maintains a steady groove, and its sound feels classy yet slightly perverse. Upon closer inspection, many of its tracks reveal subtle charms, mainly in the form of intriguing textural clashes, rhythmic shifts, and samples that temporarily stray from its primary palette of tones. The most effective tracks include vocals, or some other emotive element — too much of the album floats along in a stoned haze, but its gradual drift toward more expressive and communicative tracks is a nice trick in and of itself.
Buy it from Amazon.
12/30/08 12:40 pm
Well said on the Flying Lotus. It’s a nice record, but I keep wondering why so few people see the record (”RobertaFlack” especially) for the trip-hop it is. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it’s pretty much boilerplate.
12/30/08 1:00 pm
Yeah, exactly. I read a bunch of reviews and I can’t remember anyone just saying it, if anything, they try to sell it as a hip hop record, which is just sorta laughable. I mean, it’s a pretty standard album within the trip hop/downbeat electronica genre! It’s good, but let’s not pretend it’s some bold new thing. They were playing this stuff in coffee shops in 1997.
To a certain extent, I can’t help but feel like, in terms of year-end stuff, it’s this year’s equivalent of The Field, in that Kompakt had been putting out similar or better material for a long time, but suddenly that was the record to break through and catch on with critic people. In this case, it’s quasi-Ninja Tune aesthetic stuff.
12/30/08 5:04 pm
i listen to flying lotus and i keep expecting ‘aqua teen hunger force’ to start any second
PASS
12/31/08 10:40 am
I actually have been meaning to get around to this album. Mainly to see what all the buzz was about. After listening to this song a few others the biggest reason i think it differentiates itself from the trip-hop label and why “heads” might be so into it is it has a bit more of a J-Dilla style than a pure Massive Attack London/UK trip-hop (or even Portishead circa 1990s) sound. Mostly in the syncopation, fuzz and mixing. And Dilla’s as well as other Stones Throw/Madlib beat tapes have been big in the last year or two.
All in all probably won’t buy it. But nice to listen to.
1/1/09 8:50 pm
Don’t be so quick to write off FlyLo as run of the mill trip-hop. Check a track like “Interference” off of the L.A. EP 1 and try to find anything else that sounds like that.
He’s undeniably unique, IMO. Just because he’s getting a lot of praise before some other artists, doesn’t mean it’s undeserving.
If it’s not your thing thats cool, but shit, the man is creative.
1/1/09 10:36 pm
Please don’t misunderstand: I think he’s talented and good, and I like Los Angeles just fine, but I do think it’s quite a lot like stuff people were doing 10+ years ago. Not everyone has to break the mold, you know? Just because I think he fits into a genre doesn’t mean I don’t think he’s being creative or has his own style within it. Being trip hop is NOT A BAD THING! If anything, I’m commenting on how people are so eager to distance themselves from a subgenre which has given us a lot of very good music.