The world of instru­men­tal hip-hop has gone through the wringer the last few years. Some of the heroes of this sound have moved on and left it to the new pro­duc­ers. Some of these new pro­duc­ers are still stuck in the “sam­ple some funk drums, stick some keys and strings on it, and loop that shit for four min­utes.” How­ever, a ris­ing crop of beat­mak­ers have been inno­vat­ing, expand­ing this mode and explor­ing new ter­ri­tory: Mike Slott, Fly­ing Lotus, Illium Sphere, and over the course of three albums for First Word Records, kid­kanevil has been prov­ing him­self to be on these excit­ing artists. His third album, Basho Basho con­tin­ues the Japanese-influenced drums of Back Off Man, I’m A Sci­en­tist, and adding a slightly wonky, synth-fueled ele­ment to the intri­cate pro­gram­ming. The tracks on Basho Basho bounce with heavy bass kicks, and laser melodies bounc­ing all around, like on “Megajoy/J-POP”. The con­tem­pla­tive “Set­suko” feels like Japan in a dystopic 2020 night set­ting. The clat­ter­ing and stum­bling “Drunken Mas­ter” is beat-fu of the high­est order, a ram­bling col­lec­tion of squelches and per­cus­sion that lurches itself in the most genius of ways: loose but tight. Things go into over­drive with “Make Doves Bounce,” fea­tur­ing syn­co­pated keys and hugely warp­ing synth bass enfold­ing a dom­i­nant kick drum. The synths in par­tic­u­lar are a high­light, they stretch and twist around the beat in an organic swirl, vault­ing this track into the stratos­phere. The clos­ing “Yokai” is melan­choly and tex­tural, hec­tic per­cus­sion, minor keys, and a tin­kling of chimes that ride the album out on a feel­ing of hope to be sought after. Get your­self to Band­camp and pick up a phys­i­cal or dig­i­tal copy. If you buy the CD from here, you get an imme­di­ate down­load, plus your choice of one of kidkanevil’s pre­vi­ous albums for free. Quite a good deal. Also, check out the pro­mo­tional mix­tape the man put together on Soundcloud.

This is the shit that keeps me going with music: sounds like it’s the club music on a space­ship zoom­ing around outer rim of the galaxy (sip­ping on Pan-Galactic Gar­gle Blasters, ya’ll). Check out “Quan­tum Leap,” for instance: insane laser melodies careen­ing around and around the slappy beats, street cruisin’ music for the craters. Else­where you get tracks like the title track and “Goulash,” loud stom­pers lurch­ing about the sound­scape like wild mon­sters strug­gling to under­stand them­selves. I could only imag­ine the chaos that reigns when “Sky­fire” hits a loud soundsys­tem, the heart-stopping-on-a-dime changes, the com­plex rhythms and thick, undu­lat­ing bass lines putting on a cos­mic rock con­cert within four min­utes. Closer “Titans” doesn’t let up. The title fits the epic nature of it’s tableau, drums set­ting the stage for a dev­as­tat­ing synth work­out that is like the gods talk­ing to you in their own lan­guage. You don’t under­stand it, but you get it. It’s this kind of don’t-call-it-future-cause-it’s-happening-right-fucking-now! music that Slu­gabed, Ikonika, Joker, Mike Slott, Starkey, Eskmo, etc. are doing that defies gen­res and only leaves you feel­ing breath­less with it’s fresh air.
Slu­gabed — Sonic Router Mix
Slu­gabed — Dummy Mag Mix

Gonna make this a quick one. Check em all out!

DJ Food — A Shape of Things Reader

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DJ Food — A Weird World Reader

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DJ Food — Blech 20.1

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Chem­i­cal Broth­ers — Late Night Psy­chotronik Mix
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Bass­nec­tar — 2010 IDJ Mix­tape
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Shlohmo — XLR8R Pod­cast
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1000 Names — Lowrid­ers Mix­tape 002
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Bite­size Beats — La Mix­ette Vol. 24: Syn­the­size Me
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The name “Q4” comes from quadra­phonic music, which gen­er­ally means four sound sources cre­at­ing a dimen­sional space for music to travel around in (ah.…memories of Beastie Boys con­certs.…). Not exactly some­thing you can repli­cate at home eas­ily, and Sound Sur­round­ings doesn’t attempt to do this. Rather, the square of sound is meant to be the three musi­cians and the lis­tener. Arts the Beat­doc­tor, Sense, and STW com­prise The Q4 and the album is very much in the realm of “down­tempo” and “instru­men­tal hip-hop.” What makes it imme­di­ately more than those labels, though, is the strong sense of melody and com­po­si­tion that per­vades these beat con­struc­tions. Take stand­out track “One Of These Days,” which uses a sam­ple I think I rec­og­nize from Michael Mann’s Miami Vice film. Amidst swoon­ing strings, syn­co­pated keys, and thick drums, the melan­choly voice cries out “one of these days, and it won’t be long, you’re gonna search for me and I’ll be gone…”. It’s a heady brew and com­pletely cap­tures the essence of the very best of this kind of music. The Latin inflec­tions of “Oscuros Ange­les,” fea­tur­ing Curra Suarez is grounded by deep bass and calls to mind a heady night out on the town. Songs like “Look Again,” “Goin’ Down,” and “Split Per­son­al­ity” show the artists in Q4’s predilec­tion for using jazz as a main method of melody and atmos­phere. Brushed per­cus­sion, mean­der­ing bass, falls of keys, horns, these are the sounds that careen around quadra­phonic space between Q4 and the listener.