Blogarhythms

Hopefully some of you went out and peeped Ann Arbor, Michigan-based emcee Buff1’s sophomore LP There’s Only One when I told you to a couple of months ago. If you did you know that Ypsilanti, Michigan-based beatmaker 14KT — who is a member of both the Lab Techs producers collective and, like Buff, the Athletic Mic League — had some ill beats on there.

This week 14KT drops The Golden Hour, his debut production album, on the A-Side Worlwide label. The disc puts the emcee/DJ/producer’s diced-up loops, stumbling programming, offbeat syncopation, lush synthesizers, nut-sack rattling bass, abundant vocal bites and Funk/Soul/Pop inspired arrangements front-and-center. There are vocal contributions from Tiffany Paige, Karla Crawford, Lovesong, Keri Kirk, and Jax of Lunar Unit, but they never distract attention from the real star of the show, which is the music.

Please note, I said “music” and not “beats.” That’s because the work he puts in on The Golden Hour puts 14KT in the same class as cats like The Neptunes and Timbaland who revel in their musicality and would likely bristle at the notion that they just “make beats.” Sure, 14KT’s beats knock, are riddled with samples, and are often as lo-fi and dirty as anything Madlib’s made over the last decade, but there’s a compositional quality to his tracks that takes them beyond the beat-demo-ish format the instrumental beat genre often gets stuck in.

As plush and mature as 14KT’s compositions are, they’re still head-bobbably underground like the various entries in the aforementioned Otis Jackson’s Beat Konducta series or his legendary homie Jay Dee’s magnum-opus Donuts. He just let’s the techno-organic side of Dilla’s aesthetic — the one inspired by the pioneering synth work of old-school Funk and Jazz acts, proto-Electronica, New Age, Prog-Rock, Krautrock, Eurodisco, Synthpop and Electro-Funk like musicians from Michigan, the birthplace of Techno, have for decades — loose in a more flagrant manner.

Album opener “The Waiting Room” and album closer “Illustrious,” which happen to be my two favorite tracks on the album, are the most conspicuously mechanical. The former is an uptempo retro-Electro jam with vocoded hooks, carnivalesque keys, rise-of-the-machines synth swells, boomy 808’s, stick-n-bucket percussion and a rear-view-mirror-vibrating bass hum that pays tribute to Kraftwerk and Arthur Baker. While the latter is a smoothed-out ’80s-style Synth-Funk tune with liquid synths, a shuddering rhythm and an off-kilter vocal that fits somewhere between Felix da Housecat and OutKast (but would make Chromeo, Sa-Ra, Hollyweerd and James Pants all proud) and sounds like an android dreaming about breaking out the electric lambskin and getting busy with a sexy she-cyborg.

14KT “Illustrious (End Titles)” feat. Jax of Lunar Unit

Though synthesizer squiggles are present throughout, the majority of 14KT’s compositions are rooted in the more conventional boom-bap programming & sample chopping of Hip-Hop as well as the beat-centric grooviness of Neo-Soul & Future-Soul, and imitate the luxuriously languid arranging style of vintage Soul, Jazz and Funk. The result is a production aesthetic that bridges the gaps between the progressive music of the spaced-out ’70s, the synthetic R&B of the ’80s, the mid-to-late-’90s Hip-Hop (like “Life’s a Bitch” and “Sugar Hill” for example) that sampled that era, boom-clap Hip-Hop and contemporary Soultronica.

If I start naming off more highlights (ahem… “ICU (Smile),” “Can We?? (Chill Again),” “NNE Mode,” “The Inside,” “Reprise (Start Over),” “Miss U. (4 Lost Loved Ones),” etc.) I’m going to wind up writing something good about every song on The Golden Hour. Virtually free of filler, it’s the rare sort of (mostly) instrumental production showcase that commands the listener’s attention from beginning to end. Oh, did I not mention it’s sort of a concept album and dude’s beats tell fucking stories yet? It’s nothing short of outstanding, and should put 14KT’s name at the top of a lot of emcees and singer’s wish-list of producers to work with.

Personally, I’d like to see somebody like Snoop Dogg get at the kid. His unique mix of bombastic boom-bap beats & slithery synth Funk imbued with woofer-blowing bass, and his expert understanding of classic-sounding arrangements is a future-forward update of the technique that made Dr. Dre’s work in the ’90s so groundbreaking. And it would suite the post “Sensual Seduction” D-O-double-G to a tee.

That’s an item from my wish-list though. What really matters is that you put 14KT’s The Golden Hour on yours.