Aufgehoben – Messidor

2006 saw some of the gnarliest noise I’d seen in a long time. For the last few weeks I’ve had one helluva hard time deciding who to cut from my year end top ten list in order that it doesn’t end up being all noise. What with Human Animal, Tribulation, The Long Salt and Prurient’s Pleasure Ground all vying for slots, I never expected something as good as Aufgehoben’s Messidor to come so suddenly out of left field. I’m sure some of you readers are sick of hearing about how burly and intense this shit is, “what about Joanna Newsom” you say. As awesome as Ys is, I thought it more important to focus on this underrated little gem than preach to the choir about the wonders of Renaissance Fair devotee Newsom and her subtly beautiful harp. I think you’ve probably heard enough about how strong that record is from pretty much every publication on the planet this year that I don’t need to spend the last weeks of the review year telling you the same old shit about it.

Now….where was I? Oh yes…Aufgehoben.

The members of Aufgehoben are an elusive group to be sure. In fact, the only member that I know by name is Stephen Robinson who is a regular contributor to The Wire magazine. Mostly the members choose to remain anonymous, not putting their names on the record itself or the band website. The group records together and edits later, providing for a very improvisatory feel to the music. Formerly known as Aufgehoben No Process, the latter part being dropped but still noted on the inside sleeve; there was no post-production tampering aside from editing.

Everything on Messidor is pushed into the red and although this can sometimes detract from a record by belittling its dynamic range, let me assure you that the soft parts are equally quiet and administered to great effect. Oddly enough the album comes off as equal parts Merzbow and This Heat. This is to say that the album is excruciatingly abrasive noise grounded by some stellar drumming the likes of which you aren’t going to find on another noise record. The percussive clatter creates a sort of negative space for the passages of nauseating feedback and found sounds, eventually building to near blast beat intensity.

Aufgehoben proves that you don’t have to howl through a distorted mic or yell obscene lyrics to be attention grabbing. While those tricks work sometimes to great effect for groups like Wolf Eyes and Prurient respectfully, Aufgehoben’s members trump them by keeping their mouths shut and beating the shit out of you. In the literal and physical sense the group is playing with frequencies and dynamics which can be painful even at a moderate volume.

While Messidor is certainly not going to be for everyone, like Skullflower’s supremely intense Tribulation, it rewards patience. I’m sorry if your idea of reward isn’t “holy fucking shit my ears” as you cup your hands over them.

Tom Waits – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards

Three decades ago, or so the story goes, Tom Waits would break up live sets of the late-night beatnik-bard jazz – then his calling card – by grabbing a newspaper and sculpting a song or two around the headlines and news-briefs of the day. The exercise seemed like an attempt to capture something immediate and raw, maybe put an aching reprise or an emotional undercurrent beneath a story so familiar the crowd would’ve passed over it on their way to the funnies or the crossword puzzle. Waits pulls a similar trick on his latest offering, a limited-edition, three-disc set chronicling years worth of B-sides, lost gems and studio outtakes. The track, “Road To Peace,” revolves around the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and it tells you a lot about what to expect from Waits’ latest release.

The song itself is a bizarrely addictive but straightforward affair: seven minutes of lurching blues accented with a walking upright bassline and soulful blasts of electric guitar. Waits, who adopts an emotive and wobbly long-form narration, allows the details to drive the story. (An 18-year-old Palestinian boy, disguised as an Orthodox Jew, blows up a bus in Jerusalem, triggering an Israeli military attack on a Hamas militant, which then leads to the killing of five Israeli soldiers.) The chorus, if you will, hammers home the point that violence and hatred ironically continue to define the “road to peace.” Waits takes no sides and offers few (if any) grand political statements, some obligatory jabs at world leaders or Henry Kissinger aside. The track is far from Waits’ best work and even could be viewed as a yin to the yang of the more effective – and more apolitical – anti-war song “Day After Tomorrow.” But the song resonates and, 10 or 20 times through, you’ll still find yourself completely and eerily captivated by certain moments, whether it’s glassy shards of guitar or the way Waits’ voice sways and sinks when he sings lines like “The last thing that he said on Earth was ‘God is great and God is good.’”

Such is the verdict on Orphans, an often-jaw-dropping set that hits record stores just in time to make everyone’s “Best of 2006” lists and give Waits disciples new reason to celebrate. This is not Tom Waits’ best record, though its depth can be breathtaking. Its 54 songs can sound, almost by definition, imperfect, diamonds before the cut and polish and showroom presentation. Some are enticing but bizarre. Some seem to serve as sketches for work that’s appeared elsewhere or has yet to surface at all. But the whole package — wrapped around the loosely defined titles “Brawlers,” “Bawlers” and “Bastards” –- is riveting, a collection that should humble lesser musicians who only can aspire to the mantle of Waits’ discarded work.

Orphans is also, in true Waits fashion, an incredibly eclectic work. Listeners will get a grimy Bill Haley-meets-James Brown dance-floor jukebox-stomp fashioned after Waits’ own “Jockey Full of Bourbon” (“Lie To Me”). They’ll hear full-throated blues with mournful guitars and wailing harmonica (“Rains On Me,” “Lord I’ve Been Changed,” “Lucinda”). They’ll be treated to dirgy, Bone Machine-era rock romps (“The Return of Jackie and Judy,” “LowDown”) and jazzy shuffles fueled by handclaps or junk-percussion (“2:19,” “Walk Away”). And that’s just the first disc (“Brawlers”).

On “Bawlers,” the second disc, Waits shifts gears with a 20-song set of piano ballads, jazzy melancholia and county-tinged odes. There’s not a dud in the pack and the standouts here are just as difficult to compress into a few sentences. Suffice to say fans of Waits’ 70’s-era work will find reasons to be moved close to tears (“You Can Never Hold Back Spring,” “It’s Over,” “World Keeps Turning”), those who loved Mule Variations will discover rusted blues gems that appear to hail from the period (“Shiny Things,” “The Fall of Troy”) and those familiar with the scope of Waits’ back-catalog will find their share of surprises (a grungy version of Leadbelly’s “Goodnight Irene,” a subdued country-and-western take on “Young At Heart,” a spirited new recording of the End of Violence soundtrack offering “Little Drop of Poison”). Tracks like “Down There By The Train,” a bluesy earthquake-aftershock where Waits’ hoarse moans rumble over understated piano and bass, will knock you off your feet.

Then, as strange as this might sound, disc three (“Bastards”) is where we really tumble down the rabbit hole. Here, Waits’ theatrical side struts about in all its glory, winding through morbid readings of Georg Buchner or Charles Bukowski, the drunken, “Piano Has Been Drinking”-style jazz of “Altar Boy,” or an a cappella cover of Daniel Johnston’s “King Kong.” Yes, Waits’ surreal “Heigh Ho” surfaces, as does his bluesy cover of “Book of Moses” and a musical impression of Kerouac’s “On The Road.” The set’s final installment — 55 surreal moments strong — ends with two uncredited tracks, a great dead-pan joke about an old woman in a supermarket and some between-song banter about mysterious dog treats. (“I wasn’t really sure what it was, until I read the label on the back. And it said, ‘Bull penis.’ I was a little shocked. I know you can get just about anything in this world. You can get a whale’s pancreas, if you wanted one. I could get you one. But, come on, a bull’s penis? … And it said, ‘A real meat snack.’ There’s just no dignity in that.”)

Listeners, like myself, who’ve followed Tom Waits for years sometimes find it difficult to critically pick apart his work, instead waxing poetic about his place as one of America’s finest living songwriters or recalling where we were the first time we heard Nighthawks At The Diner or Small Change, Rain Dogs or Swordfishtrombones, Mule Variations or Real Gone. Orphans will, no doubt, inspire similar flights of breathlessness, present company included. It’s not a record for everyone, as those at Anti- seemed to realize when they decided to limit the number of copies pressed.

But, for those who may wonder if it lives up to the critical raves it’s sure to invite, you don’t need to look much further than a song quietly buried halfway through the second disc. The gauzy cover of Teddy Edwards’ “Little Man” is vintage Waits: somber piano at closing time, that smoky voice just a half-step above a broken whisper. The words Waits sings, accompanied by a sullen piano and saxophone, pulsing bass and brushed percussion, could be advice to his son as much as supplemental liner notes to the listener: “Little man/ Never hurry, take it slow/ Things worthwhile need time to grow/ Little man/ Don’t look back/ There are things that might distract/ Move ahead/ towards your goal/ and the answers will unfold.”

Here’s to more answers, then, and to more years.

Hermelin – Meskalin Blonde

I feel bad now that I reviewed all of the bands that I have. The first thirteen or so were really easy for me, since I already knew those bands; it was lazy and not fair to the reader. Not very fair to myself either, since I didn’t have to expend very much energy or skill on writing about them. Now that I have actually started to delve into European band’s myspace pages, I feel kind of proud, hoping that my finds will turn into someone’s favorite new band, even if it is just for a week. I promise you, the reader, I will try my hardest to find obscure bands, maybe even have a little thematic consistency between each week, instead of flip flopping between emotional hardcore, grind, shoegaze, then instrumental every other day. Maybe I will even start a mixtape type of deal, where I review a week or so worth of bands that would fit perfectly on a mixtape. Yeah, I like that idea.

So, Hermelin. Another great find. Like I have said before, Germany produces some really amazing bands. This song is pretty rad. Starting with an off kilter guitar part reminiscent of Sonic Youth, it follows along with a steady beat by the drums, then the song turns in on itself, falling into an Explosions In The Sky ringing twin guitar attack. There are some really gorgeous melodies being played here, with the bass being the solid backbone every great post rock band needs, not too showy or flashy, but playing some great leads. Then the guitars go back into the Sonic Youth/Slint sound, to great effect. There are some really great drum fills in here as well. A fantastic song all around.

Raymond Scott Woolson – Accidental Grace Notes

At some point in my day, I will be struck by the conclusion that everything in this world is connected. Just as I think I’m going about my life, at times, completely separate from everyone else around me, I realize just how close we really are to one another. For instance, I was reading about an artist named Raymond Scott Woolson on Tonevendor (www.tonevendor.com), a mail-order company based in Florida specializing in ambient dream pop that has consistently been a part of my life for some time. I read a short description of his work and proceeded to order his record entitled Accidental Grace Notes. When I received the record and was blown away by its beauty, by its special quakes of sound that burrow under your skin, with swirling guitars and shadowy atmospherics, the record quickly began to resonate at such an alarming rate that I wondered whether I would love it just as much every time I listened.

I did. The record has become a staple in my daily listening. It glides and moves like so few releases I’ve heard so far this year. Anyone who is a fan of ethereal and otherworldly guitar epics, and who would rather gaze at the stars than at their shoes, owes it to themselves to pick this album up. Naturally, I had to learn more about this artist. As it turns out, there is little to be found at his website (www.raymondscottwoolson.com) other than information about his past releases, a curious page documenting his family origins, and his devotion to an obscure film from the 1960’s called Whistle In The Wind. There was one interesting tidbit: it turns out he lives about 30 miles from me, out in the country, in a remote little town that lends itself immensely for making music like this. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I immediately got in touch with him.

The record was written, produced, and mixed by Woolson, and in addition to playing all the music, he also designed the artwork for the release. In the spirit of the “music as an artifact” aesthetic I’m so fond of, Woolson could have sat idly by, posting these songs to a MySpace page, waiting for someone to drop by but instead went to great pains to make sure the music was given a physical identity. The songs that make up Accidental Grace Notes were recorded between 1998 and 2005 and were culled from 3 CDR releases, also self-released, entitled Atmospherium, Legendarium, and The View From Boggins Heights. When I wrote to Woolson about the arrangement of the songs, which create a fluid and cohesive listen, he said: “They had to stand up well outside the context of their original albums. This eliminated the more droney, less structured soundscapes.” For instance the epic bombast of “Selina’s Bonfire” leads right into the graceful washes of guitar in “The Audubon Point” with such ease, you would swear it was meant to be.

Some songs segue into one another with field recordings and baby talk, giving the listener a good indication of where Woolson draws his inspiration. I asked him about this and he replied: “The peacefulness of the fields, orchards, and woods, the sounds of happy children. The sky inspires me very much, the moon at night, a flaming sunset, and clouds. Sometimes I think what I’m trying to do is create the sound of the sky.” One can imagine the vast expanse of nature when listening to the appropriately named “At Length For Hatching Ripe He Breaks The Shell”, and know that Woolson has very nearly captured “the sound of the sky.”

STNNNG – Fake Fake

Every band looks to the past for inspiration. Aerosmith looked to Led Zeppelin. The Black Crowes looked to the Rolling Stones. Modest Mouse looked to Built to Spill. At once a way to pay homage and find common ground, band members use their influences as a way to connect and bond with each other as well as the audience. How many times have you heard, “X band is awesome! They sound just like Y band.”? Arguably, these comparisons can act as setbacks for bands trapped in the mental closet of their mentors. Others benefit by association: “If I like Y band, maybe I’ll spend five bucks and check out X band.” STNNNG’s (pronounced “stunning”) Fake Fake balances on this tightrope of awesome influences with a vision of something different for the future, crafting an album of great, disgusting, flu punk.

Shellac, The Jesus Lizard, and Mclusky form STNNNG’s trifecta of mentors. Vocal sneers, debauched guitar lines, and deliberately punchy bass n’ drums attack the listener’s fragile ears. But don’t expect “Slave Ship” rip-offs. The LP succeeds in sublimating its influences, each surfacing for air somewhere on the album. Fake Fake demands a spin or two to fully sink in, but STNNNG carves itself a trenchant home on the amygdala.

The brand of STNNNG’s favorite bands manifests itself in Jesse Kwakenat’s brutal bass and J. Michael Ward’s punishing drums, which stick together like Velcro and push the music forward. The two trade in lurching, offbeat rhythms and primal, head banging rock, often changing between the two and/or mashing them together. The effect is akin to a teetering ship in nauseating chop, forcing the guitars to the rails to puke off the side. Heavy, driving, and prominent, STNNNG’s rhythm owns the band; every other element of STNNNG flounders without Kwakenat and Ward powering the vessel.

If the rhythm is the sails, Adam Burt’s and Nathan Nelson’s guitars are the sheets, trimming this way and that as their notes pull against each other in a piercing cacophony or mesh together in soaring guitarmonies. Taking a backseat to the rhythm and vocals, both men color Fake Fake’s ten songs with whines, squeals, grunts, chugs, and chokes, caging their crunch like the Gravelles. “The Spider & The Typewriter” ends with a gang of notes raping each other in a truck stop bathroom. Screams of pleasure and pain leak from overdriven amps. Like an aural train wreck, it’s impossible to ignore.

But the unavoidable grab of STNNNG lies in vocalist Chris Besinger’s dreadfully deviant non sequiturs. His random ramblings confuse when ingested one line at a time, but if the listener steps back, puzzles of human struggles and carnal thoughts piece themselves together. Take “Tactics”: “And this girl/ she codes it/ we go to bed/ spits it back out.” The tacit scene is clear.

No doubt Besinger learned some tricks from David Yow. Yow mumbled like an insane homeless man with trash in his mouth. Besinger actually pronounces, but the effect is no less delinquent. In his annunciated but practically incoherent talk/scream/gasp, Besinger hovers frantically close to insanity as he sputters crazy tirades into a fearful microphone, evidenced in his ruminations on his three deaths (in the appropriately titled “The Incidents Surrounding My Three Deaths”). Besinger’s lists of his deaths via bullet, bus disaster, and missile mishap, captivate with odd, macabre description.

Fake Fake’s six minute leadoff track “Grand Island, Neb.” rocks as hard as anything else on the album. Besinger assumes the role of several characters on a doomed lifeboat, switching disorientingly fast between the frustrated rowers and an overbearing, slave-driving captain. Watery guitars lap against the side of the boat while the bass and drums rock its hull off-kilter, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, adeptly setting the scene. The rowers complain, “This is like the worst job I’ve ever had”; “”I’m dying of thirst!”; “We’ve been out here for weeks/ We’ve hardly moved an inch”; and “This is ridiculous!”. The captain stubbornly replies with the same refrain: “Row! Keep Rowing!” The music picks up the pace as desperation, dehydration, and delirium creep into the minds of the seamen until the captain finally wins with his ironclad will and own false sense of poise.

Fake Fake documents a young band still rooting out its own distinct sound, and doing a damn fine job at it, too. STNNNG explores weirdo, difficult, rough punk, the kind that induces fevers and temporary insanity in its listeners. Besinger probes mankind’s ugly side, and, in doing so, congers scarring images hiding within the deepest recesses of the human mind. STNNNG coaxes listeners to row the river Styx. Just steer carefully; I wouldn’t want to row under STNNNG’s crazy coxswain.

Momus – Ocky Milk

Ocky Milk, the latest from Momus, was crafted with intention. The intention apparently was to make an album of background bossa nova with injections of Japanese absurdism. Or something like that. Well, Momus may have succeeded but that doesn’t mean that the results were worth the trouble.

My guess is that most listeners will grow tired of the Yellow Submarine lyrics (e.g., phrases like “Playing on a strawberry kazoo” from “Frilly Military”) and the minimalist music before running through the whole disc. It’s one thing to be eccentric and interesting, but it’s another to be eccentric and pedestrian. To me, Ocky Milk tends towards the latter. The beats and handclaps are pure bedroom Casio; the backing basslines are sporadic and perfunctory; the occasional synth strings and keyboard chords don’t add much meoldy; and the dadaist Beefheart lyrics don’t seem to go anywhere. The singing carries the melodies, and it’s the singing that distinguishes one song from another. Musically, not much is going on. It’s a welcome break when an actual guitar joins the fray, as on “Hang Low.” At least then it sounds like some effort went into the song.

“7000 BC,” apart from its errant vocals, may come closest to being both weird and intriguing. Its odd use of melody sounds technically wrong but in a warped way it gives cohesion the composition. It sounds like Snakefinger on psychedelics. “Zanzibar” sounds like a Beatles song from the Rubber Soul school of songwriting: it’s straightforwardly composed and melodic. It exudes an Al Stewart air that makes it refreshingly appealing. Compare that to “Dr Cat,” whose excursion into random noise and hushed, distorted vocals and whistling just seems flat. And then comes “I Refuse To Die.” Its vaudevillian approach seems completely out of place, even if it’s meant to show some range. It sounds like cartoon music.

Laid-back eccentricity has its place in music, to be sure. Ariel Pink has made some brilliant songs. And Beck got his start that way. But generally if you’re going to make this your modus operandi as an artist, you run the risk of making music that’s more interesting to you than it is to anyone else. I feel like that’s what’s happening on Ocky Milk.

It could be that others will celebrate this release. You may be able to connect with this kind of thing better than I. To me, there’s not enough substance here to connect with. It doesn’t have the charm or depth that warrant third or fourth listens. It could also be that this album needs to be put into context with other Momus releases in order to appreciate its stylistic progressions and its artistic development. Taken by itself, though, it may have trouble winning converts to whatever cult following Momus has enjoyed.

The Beat Devils – That Chick

Straight out of Moscow, the Beat Devils do one of the twenty-first centuries’ best impressions of old school rockabilly. With more beat than devil, the Russian’s owe more to 1950’s rockabilly than the b-movie flare of The Meteors or The Quakes. Their best song, “My Train Had Gone,” shows no hint of accent despite the broken English lyrics. The churning beat reminisces pre-honky tonk country with twangy riffs and big bass slaps. Contrasting the cheery tones, Mike “Gremlin” Bogdanov sings about incidental transient life in an unfriendly town, perfecting a warbling southern drawl.

“Wild Rockin’ Moma” showcases a swingy chorus punctuated with Chuck Berry-esque solos. Unlike the decidedly country “My Train Had Gone,” “Wild Rockin’ Moma” sounds more like a Howlin’ Wolf/Buddy Holly side-project. Locomotive woo-hoo’s and occasional drum breaks accentuate the fun loving attitude as the song descends into a final chorus. “That Chick” adds a distinct energy with a call-response chorus and yelping hinting at the psychobilly influence the band’s name suggests.

Jangling guitars and instrument dueling prove endemic in the band’s style. Whichever song the listener chooses will contain an element of musical dualism or contrasting instruments. “My Train Had Gone” takes a minute and allows the bass to bounce off the drums in a punchy solo; “That Chick” features an old school call and response chorus exhibiting disimiliar vocal stylings; “Wild Rockin’ Moma” shows the dichotomy of precise Chuck Berry-esque guitarmanship and the rawness of Howlin’ Wolf.

Another key motif is the Beat Devils’ start-stop. The chorus of “My Train Had Gone” illustrates this best with chunky down strokes following the lyrics before returning to their usual jangly form. “Wild Rockin’ Moma” and “That Chick” pause to emphasize specific phrases or words. Overall, the Beat Devils feature a complete sound with enough variance to entertain and a certainty of style to keep the listener’s attention.

Remote Islands – Smother Party

This record is a mess. An amalgamation of cheap synthesizers, guitars, poorly recorded vocals, Casio drumbeats, and a smattering of stringed instruments all irrationally intertwined to create the Remote Islands lo-fi indie mess “Smother Party.” This ‘sound’ was undoubtedly Colin Pate’s intention, as many bands (Moldy Peaches, The Microphones) have charted these waters before. However, Remote Islands tries to toe the line between sardonic quirky anthems and sincerity; leaving one to imagine, as the title suggests, that he wrote these songs while drinking with his buddies and then woke up the next morning to the false impression that they were worthy of recording. Unfortunately, this was not the case, as “Smother Party” apparently took Pate almost three years to record.

The incongruity of this album, from every angle of critique, makes it almost impossible to be taken seriously. The music is primarily based on headache inducing layered ultra-cheesy MIDIesque keyboards and Pate’s slightly off key vocals, which he tries to hide with a bevy of effects. The songs jump from one idea to the next without rationale while Pate spits out a series of irrational lyrics – providing gems such as “You never knew nothing else/like Africa and all of it’s cars/tire speakers couldn’t go too far/stand up on the borders of your landslide.”

If there were any rhyme or reason to this record it is buried in the muddle, and one would need to spend a good deal of time deciphering. Unfortunately, the album is too chaotic and brash to commit to listening to that intently. I personally need a shower after engulfing myself in this muck for too long.

Gentleman Auction House – The Rules Were Handed Down

Apparently girls do go crazy for a sharp dressed man. Judging from the latest crop of one hit wonders on your alternative and rock stations dress shirts, vests, and ties seem to be all the rage these days. Also popular is the big musical collective, cramming as many members as possible onto an album and into a van. Gentleman Auction House has combined the two to disguise the fact they haven’t a sound of their own.

Their debut EP And The Rules Were Handed Down opens with the title track, listed at only 3 and a half minutes, with an unremarkable melody that seems to drag the song on 3 times past that length. From there it’s on to sounding like a bus crash occurred on the interstate somewhere between Omaha and Athens, GA. The quavering vocals of Conor Oberst are in effect throughout, most apparent on “A Hospital Or Heaven” which also features similar lyrics of desperation and despair. It’s pretty annoying when Oberst does it and it’s even more so here. Rock and roll takes a confidence and by singing like you’re on the verge of tears is does not exude that confidence. No one in rock and roll is, or should be, that precious.

And there’s the “everything including the kitchen sink” instrumentation as well. The more the merrier. But unfortunately not everything is easily heard. For all the listed players & instruments, including “velcro,” (and you thought the drummers never got laid) the only thing you remember is the guitar and those shaky voices.

But maybe Gentleman Auction House isn’t striving for rock and roll. So what then could they be striving for? From the opening banjo of the ramshackle “Our Angry Town Runs Them Out” (complete with kazoo solo) you’re expecting to hear singer Eric Enger rasp and growl like Tom Waits. Even at only 6 songs the album is sequenced poorly. It’s difficult to get into an album that leaves you more disoriented than invigorated.

The kids in the Auction House do get an E for effort though. The artwork and packaging is nice and they clearly abide by the DIY ethic; it’s the band or family members in charge of press, tours, etc. And they’ve seen the gap between Arcade Fire releases and made their move. However it’s a sound that will be easily drowned out if not made their own.

Thavius Beck – Thru

Calling Los Angeles home, Thavius Beck returns to the fold via Thru, his second full-length solo effort on Mush. You may recognize him from past efforts under the moniker Adlib or his Labwaste project with Subtitle or maybe even his earliest output with Global Phlowtations. He’s also had numerous guest spots on various albums and has toured in support of Saul Williams (who makes an appearance on the album).

An ambitious producer, skilled engineer/programmer, and multi-instrumentalist, Thavius’s sound is quite difficult to pigeonhole. He takes various elements of electronic music and mixes them with hip-hop for an experimental, synth-driven sound that approaches the progressive sounds of Anticon artists while staying in a much more listenable frame of reference. Take for instance the stabbing, schizophrenic snare of “Under Pressure” that at first sounds a bit frantic before the underlying synth layers provide a groovy melodic background for the beat to explore.

The majority of the material herein is instrumental and takes on a dark, almost eerie vibe that hip-hop artists often avoid making for a relaxing, introspective listen. The exclusion of “party jamz” or overly experimental ambience is a welcome respite as his sound comes from a more versatile and texturally varied pallette. The plodding “The Storm Before the Calm” is a fine example of the brooding mood mentioned above.

There are, however, a few tracks that include vocals. Two of the said tracks are actually handled by Beck himself, but he also has guest spots from LA commorade 2Mex as well as Saul Williams, Mia Doi Todd, and Nocando. Saul does his thing, dropping a poetic romp on “Lyrical Gunplay” and 2Mex sounds a little like a less hateful Vinnie Paz and has a pretty decent flow on “Dedicated to Difficulty.” Nocando’s appearence on ” ’98″ goes along with the dark feel of the album as it chronicles the death of a loved one. Mia Doi Todd’s spot is the most out of the oridnary as she’s known for folk, but she doesn’t try to flow, just provides some very complimentary, eerie upper-register vocal lines.

With Thru, Thavius Beck has created a unique album that straddles the line between hip hop and other electronic music while painting a darkened, brooding mood. The compositions are textured and keep the listeners attention throughout, but can also provide a good soundtrack to your candle-lit session of introspection.

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