The Official DiS Hip-Hop Listening Club

Haven’t heard this and looking through the tracklist I see an Ariel Pink feature so I’m gonna step in tepidly lol.

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I think it may be offset by having Elzhi on the same track but we shall see.

Would like to distance myself enormously from any perceived affinity for Ariel Pink…

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listened to this earlier, think surface level is a good description. enjoyed it, not sure how often I’ll come back to it though. bottle rocket is a good track

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happy to see Camp Lo making some kind of appearance in the first month

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greg deerhoof drumming on ‘the songbird athletic’ is a step up from surface level, i’d say.

Wednesdays are hip-hop day for me now, with the new ‘dissect’s’ up too.

Not mad on this. Given it a few listens and it didn’t really hold my attention. Lyrically, he’s pretty vanilla - ‘gully fresh’, ‘b-boy stance’, ‘sick wth the rhymes’, ‘spark an el’, Mix that with samples from Style Wars, cutting up that Slick Rick sample they used on Times Up - heard it all too many times.

I like it when artists handle their own instrumentation, but I dunno… glockenspiel, ukulele, theremin - just found it all a bit twee in places. Jurassic 5 kazoos turned up to 11. I guess it’s a similar approach to someone like Edan, but he digs so much deeper and it sounds so much rawer.

Preferred it when he’s keeping it simple - In Soft Focus, The Fall Of The Light Brigade and Bottle Rocket are good.

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Aye, those three stand up a lot more than a lot of the rest of it, Daylight Into Me and Another Word For Paradise still do it for me in a throwaway way though

Just finished my second listen and came here to post something very similar to this. At first he kinda reminded me (voice-wise) of Louis Logic but more serious.

gotta agree here.

I think my favorite stuff on here is the Meridian Sound experiments

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Never heard of this so looking forward to giving this a whirl for sure. Pencilled in for the commute to work tomorrow. Really enjoying this thread. I’ve been reading mainly as I haven’t had much time to write my opinions down.

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Late with my homework again - sorry dudes.

Not heard of Lushlife at all before, so cool to hear something new. Really like the beats - pretty obvious early Kanye influence, but it’s done well and the slower tracks have a cool end-of-summer type of vibe. Lots of other stuff going on as well. Really like the way he folds in the contributions from Ezra Koenig and Greg Saunier without making a big deal of them too - I barely noticed them first couple of times and on most hip hop albums they’d stick out a mile. Couldn’t really hear Ariel Pink at all.

Do agree with what others have said about the rapping though - he is pretty one-dimensional. Main issue I’ve got though is that I find his style on this quite hectic, and it jars with the more laid back beats. (Elzhi sounds so much better on in Soft Focus). Seems a bit tight to say it, but I’d like to hear someone really decent over Bottle Rocket too, cos that beat absolutely smokes.

Is his other stuff along these same lines, Ant? There’s some really good ideas on this, and if he’s got a record where he focuses more on the sound collage type stuff (and chills out a bit on the mic), I’d really like to hear it.

Overall, not a classic, but a pretty cool listen

No idea tbh, as I said in my initial post I picked this largely as there was this odd period where I was really into it but then just kind of forgot about it and never checked out any of his other stuff. Glad you got something out of it though :+1:

this goes for everyone but dont feel bad about chiming in late on an album. any of the old recommends are still fair game to talk about.

Ant (and anyone else), you should check out his record ‘All My Idols Are Dead + My Enemies Are in Power’, which dropped early this year. Criminally overlooked IMO, and very much a reaction to events in the US election in late 2016.

Posting on behalf of @anon9806217 who let me know what he wanted to recommend for his week:

RBL Posse – Ruthless By Law

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Pumped to read some reactions to this. Great album, i’ll have more to say later.

I had a couple posts about RBL (and even posted the opening track from this album) in the Kendrick thread when Humble dropped and how it reminded of this sound.

faves off this…‘the sound’, ‘livin’ that life’ and ‘n’s on the jock’.

‘the sound’ has that synth bass.

damn, ‘livin’ that life’ is a jam. that tight old school funk guitar with g funk e’rything.

‘n’s on the jock’ is catchy. interesting production on that one, kinda slowed dutch house sounds.

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daaaamn , ive been meaning to dig into these guys for ages, had bammer weed on a playlist for the longest time and always been meaning to investigate them properly. great shout

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Ah, nice choice! Was listening the new Take It Personal podcast and started a note with people I need to dig out on Spotify and listen to again, and RBL Posse were on there weirdly. Listen To My Creep was my favourite off this, but I haven’t listened to it in maybe 20 years.

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