Oh No — Dr. No’s Oxper­i­ment | Madlib — Beat Kon­ducta Vol. 3–4: India
In some ways, I feel like I just heard these two albums, so there must be some­thing in the air, as every­one is putting out their East­ern sam­ple instru­men­tal hip-hop records. These two and the above linked Dee­jay Om release all have their spe­cific charms. Dee­jay Om’s is cer­tainly the most fun and wacky, with a vari­ety of styles. Oh No’s is def­i­nitely the hard­est in terms of thun­der­ing drums and swag­ger, with Madlib’s just hav­ing that won­der­ful rough and loose Madlib aes­thetic, like it was thrown together in 2 min­utes, but walks around like it owns the place all the same. I can’t say that I don’t rec­om­mend get­ting them all. It’s quite an inter­est­ing way to take a hip-hop influ­enced tour of the world! Dr. No’s Oxper­i­ment and Beat Kon­ducta Vol. 3–4: India are both out from Stones Throw now.

Learned about this one on the Con­troller 7 Forum, osten­si­bly because it fea­tures Con­troller 7 him­self, along­side fel­low like-minded friends like Scott Matelic and Buddy Peace, not to men­tion the other fine con­trib­u­tors. The focus here is instru­men­tal beat and sound exper­i­ments, most often com­ing from the hip-hop realm, but also ven­tur­ing into some extremely elec­tronic tones. It’s a com­pletely solid and enjoy­able com­pi­la­tion. Miles Tillmann’s opener “Chicken Salad Beats” is one of these elec­tronic hip-hop hybrids that works so won­der­fully with it’s bounc­ing beats and flour­ishes. My favorite track, though, is Con­troller 7’s “Con­sumer” which has an absolutely kill break that sim­ply crushes. Elseswhere sound col­lage extra­or­di­naire Buddy Peace lets into his world of beats, hip-hop, and ran­dom snip­pets of con­ver­sa­tion, con­jur­ing a full scene before out eyes as usual. The furi­ous jungle-esque drums of Meatsock’s “Another Place” show us there is another side to this fast style in a bril­liant com­po­si­tion of bass and drum pro­gram­ming. I really have to hand it to this label for qui­etly putting out one of the most inter­est­ing col­lec­tions of truly inno­v­a­tive pro­duc­ers work­ing today. These songs aren’t what you expect and maybe not even what peo­ple fami­lar with some of the names are expect­ing. It’s bet­ter! Out from The Secret Life of Sound on vinyl and iTunes, get one for your­self today and sup­port the names you may not always come across!