I’ve been mean­ing to write about this album for awhile. The first track I ever heard by Wax­fac­tor was “Bet­ter Days” off his Game Face EP. I was astounded. Funky, dark, rhyth­mi­cally dynamic, it was right up my alley. Then the first news of his album debut started to cir­cu­late. A sci-fi con­cept album! Fan­tas­ti­cally titled Sci-Fu, this became the album to get for me…for prac­ti­cally a year. Plagued by uncon­trol­lable dis­tri­b­u­tion delays, this was the holy grail that eluded me. This past spring, it finally came out, and it’s a dream come true for a hiphop and sci­ence fic­tion nerd like me. Strongly nar­ra­tive, with lots of found sound and voiceover nar­ra­tion tying the album together, Sci-Fu tells a sub­tle story over INSANE beats, crazy cuts, and inven­tive melodic devices. If you like your instru­men­tal hip hop full of funk, voiceovers, and scratch­ing, run to your store and get this now. From ‘theme’ track “Sci-Fu-Ism“‘s fan­tas­tic scratch­ing and cut­ting edge drum pro­gram­ming to the Bon­ham vocal count­down of “Down For The Count,” the first quar­ter sets up the SF aspect grandly. After the indus­try favorite “Reg­gae­nomics” remix gets us all pumped and funky, things enter the more omi­nous and mys­te­ri­ous aspects with “Stay Grounded” and “A Jar Ajar,” con­vey­ing the latent lone­li­ness and wist­ful dreams of space travel. “Adverse Cam­ber,” with guest 2tall, is where things take a turn for the malign, reach­ing it’s apex down the the line with the bru­tal “SRB Remix,” with Mista Ed, which has the best b-movie vil­lain opener ever: “My weapons are more pow­er­ful than yours. Your own fears have cre­ated the means of your destruc­tion. I pos­sess a stel­lar con­verter, the most pow­er­ful weapon in the uni­verse. You can­not resist me.” HELL YES. After this scratch and drum blowout, we are treated to per­haps the most beau­ti­ful piece of instru­men­tal beats and sam­ples ever laid down, the heav­enly “Blast On Call,” once again with the estimable 2tall guest­ing. His trade­marks are all over this one, too. From the squelchy beats and lovely melodies, this is a great pair­ing of two beat mas­ters (I cer­tainly hope they do more col­labs in the future). Next track, “Con­tact” reminds me of that scene in Attack of the Clones where Anakin’s step­fa­ther tells him about Tusken Raiders com­ing at dawn for his mother. Sad, mourn­ful, melan­choly, mys­te­ri­ous. “Beyond The Sun” shows that Wax­fac­tor is one of the funki­est guys on the MPC pads. These are fuck­ing drums, with a rolling bass line and ridicu­lous melody. “Alls­flolol” closes out the story with a reflec­tive coda, while “Into The Outer” serves as a cel­e­bra­tory end credit sequence. As you can tell, this album runs the gamut in what it has to offer. Taken as a whole, it’s one of the best and more inter­est­ing albums I’ve heard for awhile. It truly takes you on a jour­ney, and does it’s job of mim­ic­k­ing a sci­ence fic­tion adven­ture extremely well. Strap in, peo­ple. Get it at Bent Crayon, UndergroundHiphop.com, and other fine record stores, as well as dig­i­tally at Bleep.

Jneiro Jarel is a name you are all going to be hear­ing a lot from over the next year. His pre­vi­ous album, Three Piece Puz­zle, has already been get­ting rave reviews, and this brand new instru­men­tal release is set to put him over the edge into pro­ducer extra­or­dinare sta­tus. Fans of J Dilla, Dabrye, Fly­ing Lotus, take heed, this is a guy to watch. Beat Jour­ney is released on WORD fave Lex Records under Jarel’s alias, Dr Who Dat? Usu­ally an MC and pro­ducer, Beat Jour­ney is focused on his pro­ducer side and gives us all a gor­geous sound­scape of an instru­men­tal hip hop album. From the first neck snap­ping crashes of opener “Beat Rock” to the BoC meets Prefuse-ish-ness of “B-Boy Por­trait in Spain” (avail­able as a free down­load on the Lex site, fyi) and gui­tar and heavy kick of “Thumpa,” the album flexes it’s wide­spread tal­ent over the entire spec­trum of rhyth­mic work­outs. The Latin influ­ences of Jarel’s back­ground are promi­nently on dis­play in the shuf­fles and beau­ti­ful keys through­out. Just check out the fas­ci­nat­ing air-sucking kicks and snares, deft cuts and cooler than you bass lines of “Deep Blaque” or the fan­tas­ti­cally careen­ing cut up strings on “ASAP (Flash).” Describ­ing music as a jour­ney may be a bit of cliché, but this opus is being hum­ble as it describes itself on the tin. Recommended.

One of my favorite “intro” tracks is for the mighty Hope by Non-Prophets. The cuts on that Joey Beats pro­duced track are by this man here, Mekalek. I recently dis­cov­ered (thanks to 1200x on the Sole­sides forum) that Mekalek has his own album out now, fully self-produced. Live And Learn is a 20 track beast! The beats are some of the dusti­est chunki­est around, the cuts are sharp, and the guests are all amaz­ingly well cho­sen, even moreso because they are extremely under­ground and unknown. I’ve cho­sen the first track, which is the most well rounded track on the album, fea­tur­ing great pro­duc­tion, Mekalek’s turntable skills, and his MC cohorts, Time Machine turn­ing in a brief but sharp set of verses. Highly rec­om­mended. Get it from Undergroundhiphop.com and they throw in 2 free bonus mix CDs.

Just a short post to let you know that WORD fave Dday One has a mix­tape up for free down­load. It’s a great, mostly instru­men­tal set of chunky beats. You can check out the track­list here at HipHopCore.net.
Dday One — Blend Med­i­ta­tion (50mb ZIP — full mix)

Still absorb­ing this intrigu­ing album by Stones Throw recent signee Aloe Blacc, but from first lis­ten, this guy is bring­ing an inter­est­ing meld­ing of new music and old soul that sounds good to me. Through the course of Still Through, he puts his wide rang­ing tal­ent on soul, hip-hop, latin, electro-pop, and even man­ages to do the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary cover of Sam Cooke’s immor­tal “A Long Time Com­ing.” You would assume that cov­er­ing that with mod­ern synths and drum pat­terns would be ill advised, but he pulls it out of the water by tinging the odd sounds and arrange­ments with a heart­felt vocal that reflects the sad but hope­ful orig­i­nal well. How­ever, the song I’m most bewil­dered and amazed by is opener “Whole World,” an ode to his influ­ences and music leg­ends. The album isn’t per­fect, though. It’s incred­i­bly pro­duced through and through, but some of the lyri­cal mat­ter is kind of silly. One or two songs tread the same R&B path of a guy singing about how well he is going to make love to a girl. I know guys can’t like those songs, and I’m not sure girls think they are all that cool, either, so it always bewil­ders me why singers write them. How­ever, that’s a small por­tion of the album, and the rest is tight, excit­ing, and fresh. Check it out!