Doseone is a mercurial musical talent and one of hip-hop’s
most prolific artists. A product of the leftfield Canadian
scene as defined by the likes of Company Flow, Sage
Francis, Atmosphere and the rest of the Anticon rosta.
Subtle are a multi talented Oakland-based sextet carefully
constructed around Doseone’s vocal skills and
Jel’s proven production abilities. Keyboards,
electric cellos, acoustic guitars, drum machines and
samplers are all jumbled happily together, weaving a
lyrical web of folktronic acoustic hip-hop niceness.
This album was produced off the back of four stunningly
successful themed EPs, all released on Anticon, which
blew hip-hop purists away and bent most existing musical
boundaries. A New White is their first release
on Lex and marks a distinct evolution for a duo who
have played together and stayed together in all manner
of musical incarnations. Beginning life as live act
Themselves and then morphing into the irritatingly alienating
and short-lived cLOUDDEAD,
Jel and Doseone have earned their musical stripes and
are finally producing material that lives up to the
hype.
But this is not easy aural pleasure. On first listen
the vocals are a mumbled indecipherable blur and no
amount of time spent pouring over sleeve notes or hip-hop
sites will shed much light. Doseone is a master at filtering
and distorting his vocals, moving seamlessly between
whispering, grumbling, humming and squeaking changing
flow, volume and intonation. It sounds something akin
to the melodic gruntings of Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner
married with Ol’ Dirty Bastard and the White Stripes’
Jack White.
Subversion, in all its forms, is one of the themes referenced
throughout the album. Acoustic instrumentation looms
large with guitars, winds, a drum kit and an electric
cello subverting our expectations of how a hip-hop record
should sound. As the album progresses subdued trip-hop
beats give way to high-pitched guitars, vocal eruptions
and other vaguely rock clichéd moments. I
Love LA relies heavily on acoustic guitars and
strings offset by a series of well-constructed electronic
blips and beeps. While Long Vein Of The Law
is a powerful shower of guitar feedback woven into a
backdrop of contorted electronic emissions.
There are moments of true musical subtlety on this record.
Closing tracks She and Stiff Fruit
are awash with soothing clouds of keyboards, melodies
and solid rhythms, creating an ethereal sound that is
many things, but boring isn’t one of them. While
the b-boy roots of the main protagonists remain clear
throughout, this is an album based around an altogether
more organic sound. Repeated listening reaps rewards
as A New White reveals itself, layer by layer,
to be a slice of heavily textured musical innovation.
Hip-hop heads may be left scratching their caps in confusion
but this is a record that will be talked about when
all the rest are merely echoes.
Serena Kutchinsky
3.5/5 |
