The Apple’s Gigantic

The RZA (featuring Rev William Burk, Crisis & Thea van Seijen) “Good Night Kiss” – Digi Snacks is a long, long, long away from the RZA’s best work. Lyrically, he’s not giving us anything we haven’t heard him do before with more energy and inspiration. Musically — well, I’m going to be very charitable and suggest that his efforts amount to an experiment yielding mixed results. All of the tracks on Digi Snacks, including a handful of cuts not produced by the RZA himself, have a sparse, zoned-out sound that feels mellow and relaxing when heard a track or two at a time, but taken as a whole, the music begins to feel disconcerting and vaguely uncomfortable. He’s especially obsessed with these keyboard parts that seem to hover slowly in mid-air, seemingly disassociated from the other elements in the arrangements. Like all of his work as Bobby Digital, the sounds on the songs have an unreal crispness to them, like the musical equivalent of digital animation that dips into the uncanny valley. The overall effect is more chilling than chill, at best evoking the mindset of a deeply medicated person who has become slightly removed from reality, and at worst like having an aggravating itch while incapacitated in a coma. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)