underground_love
09-05-2003, 12:34 AM
why and dosh from anticon
@ the echo
$10 9pm
18+
or you can go to the el-p and aesop rock show @ the troubadour ...
taken from http://www.attheecho.com
As a member of Anticon-- the hip-hop collective that bleeds at will into other genres-- it's no surprise for Why? (born Jonathan Wolf) to mix in live instruments or write straight-up songs; he already matched guitar with beats on Miss Ohio's Nameless, and you could call his half of Split EP a kind of song cycle.
And yet every time I throw on Oaklandazulasylum it still sounds like the damnedest thing: surprising, confusing, and so wrong it's right. Ever since Why?, Odd Nosdam and Doseone cut their cLOUDDEAD full-length-- still their biggest claim to fame outside the hip-hop world-- they've been under the gun to cut records that are not only as fucked up as their breakthrough, but as fully-realized, albums where the artists drown you in their desparately individual voices, instead of just passing by in a flash of cleverness. For Why?, Oaklandazulasylum is the first disc since cLOUDDEAD that pulls it off.
Producers Odd Nosdam and Jel make guest appearances, but for most of the disc it's Why? who chops up song structure and shuffles arrangements from track to track, fine-tuning the music from every angle. And from the first song it sounds rich and original, with the guitar, simple percussion and blatting horns that start "Ferris Wheel" before it segues to beats and blippy electronics. Why? straddles both camps with total ease. The closest comparison I can make is to The Books' Thought for Food and its similarly organic (and gorgeously captured) mix of sample-based and acoustic music. Plenty of songwriters back their strumming with drum machines, but Why?'s not diddling with digital perfection: these are heavy, multi-layered beats, some lo-fi and crunchy and others high, bright and almost piercing.
It's as major a step as you'd expect-- really, as you'd demand-- from someone like Why?, not only for its sheer inventiveness, but the continuity that turns these lyrical snapshots into moving portraits, of urban neighborhoods, half-understood women, and most of all, Why? himself, as a kid, a misfit, and an artist.
for info on Dosh: http://www.xtravirgin.com/
@ the echo
$10 9pm
18+
or you can go to the el-p and aesop rock show @ the troubadour ...
taken from http://www.attheecho.com
As a member of Anticon-- the hip-hop collective that bleeds at will into other genres-- it's no surprise for Why? (born Jonathan Wolf) to mix in live instruments or write straight-up songs; he already matched guitar with beats on Miss Ohio's Nameless, and you could call his half of Split EP a kind of song cycle.
And yet every time I throw on Oaklandazulasylum it still sounds like the damnedest thing: surprising, confusing, and so wrong it's right. Ever since Why?, Odd Nosdam and Doseone cut their cLOUDDEAD full-length-- still their biggest claim to fame outside the hip-hop world-- they've been under the gun to cut records that are not only as fucked up as their breakthrough, but as fully-realized, albums where the artists drown you in their desparately individual voices, instead of just passing by in a flash of cleverness. For Why?, Oaklandazulasylum is the first disc since cLOUDDEAD that pulls it off.
Producers Odd Nosdam and Jel make guest appearances, but for most of the disc it's Why? who chops up song structure and shuffles arrangements from track to track, fine-tuning the music from every angle. And from the first song it sounds rich and original, with the guitar, simple percussion and blatting horns that start "Ferris Wheel" before it segues to beats and blippy electronics. Why? straddles both camps with total ease. The closest comparison I can make is to The Books' Thought for Food and its similarly organic (and gorgeously captured) mix of sample-based and acoustic music. Plenty of songwriters back their strumming with drum machines, but Why?'s not diddling with digital perfection: these are heavy, multi-layered beats, some lo-fi and crunchy and others high, bright and almost piercing.
It's as major a step as you'd expect-- really, as you'd demand-- from someone like Why?, not only for its sheer inventiveness, but the continuity that turns these lyrical snapshots into moving portraits, of urban neighborhoods, half-understood women, and most of all, Why? himself, as a kid, a misfit, and an artist.
for info on Dosh: http://www.xtravirgin.com/