After spending the last weeks of 2008 compiling my year-end wrap-up here on Blogarhythms I dedicated the first week and change of 2009 to drafting the more exhaustive year-in-review me and some friends put together every year over at Imageyenation. That means the last month of my life has consisted largely of sifting through the mountain of music I listened to over the previous twelve months, deciding what was worth noting and what wasn’t, and writing witty commentary on them.
One of many things I made note of on my trip down (short-term) memory-lane was that 2008 seemed to come up lacking in the instrumental Hip-Hop category. Don’t get me wrong…There were some major mostly-instrumental showcases of progressive production from the likes of Flying Lotus, 14KT, Daedelus, Alias, Depth Affect, Kelpe, Michna, Metaform, et al…Some other minor instrumental curiosities…A handful of joints I just didn’t get into until the year was all but over…And of course the mysterious Clutchy Hopkins…But I just remember there being a whole lot more of the moody, break-driven, sample-collage stuff going on during 2007 than there was in ‘08.
It’s entirely possible that my memory is playing tricks on me, that I’m giving some 2008’s less notable sides the short-shrift, or that a slate of early-’09 releases so swollen with really heavy instrumental records is just giving me an excuse to rewrite history so the present makes better sense…I dunno. What I do know is that if beatmakers continue to build on 2008’s instrumental triumphs the way they’re prepared to during these first few weeks of the year for the rest of the year then 2009 could go down as exceptional in the annals of head-nodding.
One of the first signposts of 2009’s instrumental intensity comes from Brooklyn-based vinyl manipulator and producer DJ Signify. A member of the notorious 1200 Hobos turntablist crew, his discography includes two celebrated mixtapes, work with various Anticon affiliates, and a string of 7” singles, including one with Grandmaster Caz. His 2004 LP Sleep No More was an experiment in sound collage storytelling that corralled Sage Francis and Buck 65 in a Saw-like house of horrors. On his new one, Of Cities, he’s still using beats to communicate ideas–and his sound hasn’t lightened up much–but the stories he’s telling aren’t quite as grim.
Some tracks, like the six interludes, “Costume Kids,” and the Blockhead collaboration “1993,” are suave after the fashion of late-night college radio and the ’90s Hip-Hop that embodied the crate-digger aesthetic. This fits the record’s overall theme of urbanism perfectly, recalling the halcyon days of old New York. The album’s two vocal cuts “Low Tide” and “Sink Or Swim,” both of which feature Aesop Rock, expand on the motif, with Aesop’s oratory on the pitfalls of egalitarianism atop a hollowed-out Bootcamp-march beat and House-y synth stabs making the latter a standout.
DJ Signify “1993″ feat. Blockhead
Of Cities isn’t all basement blunt session reminiscence over the city that never sleeps though. In fact, a few tunes are infused with a more international flavor. The locomotive, mid-tempo, shaker-driven slice of Mumbai “Bollywood Babies” samples the same Hindi lovesong that spiced up Britney Spears‘ “Toxic.” While album opener “The Sickness”–with its reverb-drenched white-space, nervously repeating one-note bassline and discordant guitar peals sounding like Joy Division bought an SP1200–and album closer “Hold Me Don’t Touch Me”–whose motorik sputter sounds like Kraftwerk with a speech impediment–rep for Manchester and Berlin respectively.
The album’s no “whirlwind through cities,” but everything about it sounds metropolitan. The grit and grime of trash-strewn sidewalks and decaying brick is reflected in the vinyl crackle and low bit-rate of the samples. Ambient noise and movement, from the strutting and scurrying of humans to the perpetual chug and thrum of mechanical contrivances, finds imitation in the spectral qualities and rhythms of the loops and breaks. And the layer of reverb that envelopes it all recreates the ghostly ricochet effect of a landscape made of concrete, steel and glass. Like the “one way” signs that dot the urban landscapes Of Cities gives direction to instrumentalists who follow in its path…Dopeness is this way.

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