In Revue: 'Wild' (Miguel)

While it seems ostentatious that kaleidoscopic crooner Miguel would surprise release a new EP of progressively druggy R&B less than a week after D’Angelo damn near broke the music web with his masterful sneak attack Black Messiah, it makes sense in the right frame.

Miguel has a penchant for psych-soul/funk/R&B "ballads" that transmute at least three times before his voice floats away from them. If D'Angelo didn't outright invent the style on his 2000 record Voodoo, he helped popularize it. A song like "Playa Playa" can shift from narcotized tribal chanting to muted horns and not bat an eye. Without D'Angelo's work on that sophomore LP, we arguably don't get: the Weeknd, Frank Ocean, Solange or Miguel. Miguel's decision then has nothing to do with brazenness; it’s a tip of the cap to a sonic forefather.

Even if this new untitled EP (Wild to make it easier) was positioned as a contender to D'Angelo's hazy throne it would still rightly be viewed as a success. Miguel really rose to prominence with the Art Dealer Chic EPs in 2012 and the format suits him incredibly well. Each plea for a late night rendezvous is more desperate; every line of pillow talk tenderer because you know there's a finite amount of time. The Sun will be coming up soon and then it'll all be over.

But that's one facet of Miguel's inimitable style. He can do braggadocio with the best of his R&B peers and Wild's opening track "nwa" allows him to fully indulge. "She just wanna ride with an NWA," he hums over closely-mic'd drums, G-Funk synth wobbles and dust settling guitars. It's the sort of the line that's infinitely cooler because of how calm Miguel sounds delivering it. He's not pretending, he's a legit "NWA," and if you don't believe him you can ask legendary Philadelphia everyman Kurupt. The Dogg Pound member goes the Miguel route, barely rising above a gruff whisper, but he doesn't have the same effortlessness. He's the dude memorizing pickup lines while Miguel's breaking the ice with something he just thought up.

And if closer "coffee" is any indication, those lines clearly work. What starts as chat about "street-art and high-fashion," accompanied by blankets of static and murmuring bass, soon "devolves" into tongue kissing. Everything follows a natural path until Miguel and unnamed lover end with "coffee in the morning." "Coffee" has one of the cleverer hooks I've heard in 2014, if only because it finds a new way to portray a night of passion. It documents the kind of psychic connection that can form between two people who started off looking for the physical.

Miguel's true genius then is taking genre tropes and spinning them into audio gold. Like "Candles in the Sun" before it, "hollywooddreams" should sink under the weight of its own idealistic hokum, but it doesn't because of Miguel's commitment to the material. He's earnestly hoping for a "big break," trying to find a dream lost under surging guitars and twinkly synthesizers. There's no doubt he'll spot that break. With the artistic vision Miguel has, he could find anything.

In Revue- 'You're Dead! (Flying Lotus)

The "new jazz" is what one enthusiastic Stereogum commenter calls the fifth Flying Lotus album You're Dead! But really that descriptor, while accurate, is one of countless ways to frame Steven Ellison's new masterpiece. Astral. Spacey. Soulful. Warm. Aggressive. Calm. Lively. Necromancing. Bold. Quiet. Circular. Universal. Those words are all equally appropriate. Particularly the last of that laundry list. Not "universal" in the sense that this album could be loved by everyone; it's far too "experimental" for that. Universal meaning that it shapes and molds stray notes into something so cosmically vast that continued exploration is not tiresome.

I've lived inside of You're Dead! for four days now, playing it at least 20 times all the way through. I've sprinkled flecks of ginger onto chicken while the funk guitars of "Cold Dead" surged from my speakers. A quilt covered my head when the tense strings of "Turkey Dog Coma" faded into the stale air of my dark bedroom. I bounced to the Snoop Dogg feature "Dead Man's Tetris" on the way to class in my Scion XB and felt like Leo in Titanic, "king of the world." And not once during any of those moments did I have the slightest urge to turn the music off.

Part of that can be chalked up to the hypnosis FlyLo puts you under on You're Dead! "Theme"'s initial raga-style drones create such a dense haze that movement is impossible. The image of a runner trying to push through an Olympic-sized pool of Jell-O comes to mind when Kendrick Lamar’s laudable verse bolts over "Never Catch Me"'s hobbled synthesizers. "Step inside of my mind and you'll find curiosity, animosity, high velocity like the prophesied meditation," the Compton MC breathlessly promises. With those rapidly firing neurons, he stalls on the simple idea of a song uniting us all in love. If we can find any kind of common ground, we can delay the “embalming fluid” for as long as possible.

Of course the whole idea of You're Dead! is that the pale specter of death will visit everyone, at least one time, if not more. The crooning vocals of "Coronus, the Terminator" could just as easily be the Grim Reaper's as Otis Redding's or Al Green's. Those little trembles in the background couldn’t possibly come from this plane of existence. FlyLo's metronomic drum claps move your feet, but those consciously weird effects paw at your soul with icy hands. The panning guitar that opens the track sounds is Isaac Hayes crossing over at séance. Or a funky soundtrack to crossing the River Styx.

Ellison never once says on the album that death isn't fearful, but he doesn't have to. The bold glimmering music speaks volumes about the beauty that lies in flatlining. There are former Dirty Projectors member Angel Deradoorian's sighs in "Siren Song" which fizz like a plastic bottle of gently shaken Sprite. Each "ooh" and "ahh" over the wah-wahing guitars and muttering bass is a pat on the back, a warm reassurance that everything will be okay in the end. The comfort continues into "Turtles" where the background jangle of wind-chimes and twittering birds calmly greet you. Initially it's jarring to hear something so naturalistic on an electronic album, but FlyLo's proven over time that he can make anything sound organic. Snoop Dogg's laconic G-funk drawl has no business pairing with experimental electronic-jazz, or whatever clunky descriptor you want to use for You're Dead!, but it's there on the hallucinatory 8-bit take "Dead Man's Tetris." "No jokes, no hoax, felt his palms he had no pulse" Snoop easily raps, sounding as good as he has at least since "That Tree." When Ellison's able to not only collaborate with true legends, but get them to bend to the afterlife narrative he's crafting, you see how inspiring his vision is.

If this all this talk of "grand visions" and death sounds self-serious, it isn't. Ellison's on record as saying, "I try to think about these things with a tongue-in-cheek perspective," and it's been rightly pointed out that the "joyous" exclamation point in the album title sheds some weight from the subject. "I wanted it to be playful, because it's the one experience we have in common. I wanted to make something that captures death from different angles—from the sad moments, to the confusing moments, to maybe even the blissful and silly ones," Ellison said in a Pitchfork Update.

That playfulness is everywhere. "Ready Err Not" ingeniously incorporates a version of the Looney Tunes "boing" sound effect into a mélange of metronomic ticks and aquatic bleeps. A laugh suspiciously similar to the Mortal Kombat chuckle bellows in "The Boys Who Died in Their Sleep." Something about Thundercat's feathery singing of "walls are closing in" on "Descent Into Madness" makes me picture a wise guy angel who can't keep from cracking jokes when you approach the pearly gates. He wants to get in one last knock-knock joke before he writes your name into the Book of Life. He says "there's no escape" but it's in such an airy tone that you'd never believe him.

A form of acceptance finally comes when Kimbra and Laura Darlington's voices coolly stutter "we will live on forever" as lithe bop piano sweeps up the last pieces of a life in closer "The Protest." It's a simple and calm declaration, one far less harried than the footwork moves around it, but incredibly profound. For all the worrying we do about the temporary nature of life, we never stop to think how long our names can live on. We don't consider that one simple action of opening a door for someone or letting another car go past in traffic can travel from one person to another in an unbreakable chain. Will all the cells in our bodies eventually wither away? Absolutely. So will every piece of hair, every hunk of skin, every last nail. But focusing on individual pieces is too myopic. We need to look at the bigger picture and see that death is just a part of life and vice-versa. So it goes with every cry, laugh, whisper and scream of You're Dead!. They're all fleeting moments pieced together to form a timeless album.

In Revue- 'n***** on the moon' (Death Grips)

"F*** it all I'm going down," Death Grips "singer" MC Ride calmly intones over the skittering electronic bug that is "F*** Me Out". Now four years deep into a career that's been defined by label agitating and political firebreathing, it's as close as the schizoid experimental rap trio has come to a modus operandi. Unlike the O'Doyle Clan in Billy Madison, they're wholly aware the house of cards is going to topple at some point. When it does; Ride, drummer Zach Hill, and producer Andy Morin will make sure to drag as many evildoers down as possible.

On their latest out-of-nowhere album n***** on the moon, the first half of a proposed double LP, Death Grips do exactly that. From the cascading waterfall of Björk vocals in opener "Up My Sleeves" to "Big Dipper"'s mechanical chug, Death Grips rail against: predatory fortune tellers, non-inclusive sports leagues, and manufactured news fodder just to name a few. Some tracks like "Black Quarterback" fly off the page with their righteously indignant criticism, while others such as "Voila" lurch out of the gate with their take-down. Prestidigitation seems to be the innocent topic of conversation in the hi-hat riding "Voila", until you realize Ride is focused on faltering religious systems. "Whose voila suits you too well?" he teasingly interrogates in the number. At their best, faith-based belief systems can unite people together in service of a higher goal. In their ugliest moments they divide and stymie dialogue. When religion turns into a buffet where anyone can take what they like, the latter outcome is far more likely; a fact Ride is readily aware of.

Not that the MC's every word should be taken as gospel. As convincing as his throat annihilating vocals often are, Ride's an admitted "bulls***er" who no one believes. In fact, much of the neurotic n***** on the moon is concerned with being heard. Ride struggles to approach anyone over gorgeously exhaling wood flutes and degenerative drum machines in "Billy Not Really".  "(She) won't come near me," he says of a scary medium. Though his hairs stand on end when he sees her, you get the sense he'd love to bend her ear with chatter if he could. "Say Hey Kid" pushes and pulls Ride towards "his people" but the party can't conclude before he's asking "what are my people for?" While "Have A Sad C**"'s production flails about like an Autobot on PCP, Ride fights off busyness and bulldozing music to rally the troops. Whether or not he's heard depends entirely on the listener.

If any of Death Grips' screeds were going to be understood, the batch of 8 tracks constituting n***** on the moon stands the best chance. Frenetic as ever, the songs possess a crispness rarely heard from the group. In "F*** Me Out" vinyl warmly crackles out of the speaker. With "Black Quarterback" producer Morin finds a way to masterfully incorporate Björk's desperate moans, a nostalgic carnival-esque melody, and Hill's hyper-speed drum work without sacrificing any one element. In aforementioned closer "Big Dipper" he cleverly calls back the melody before stacking a hiccupping Björk and tornado siren whooshes on top. Of all the sonic manipulation Morin does, his work with the Björk material is the most laudable. By and large it's so seamlessly integrated into the raging machine that is Death Grips it becomes hard to tell where one begins and another ends. Sure the Icelandic siren sticks out like a sore thumb on "Up My Sleeves", but her presence is largely undetected. So much so that she felt compelled to confirm her work on the album through her Facebook page. Most artists would ruthlessly "exploit" such a major collaborative partner, Death Grips are content to keep them in the shadows.

Ultimately this no frills approach is what continues to grant Death Grips an audience even after no-showing at concerts and being dropped from a major label. Ride's frequent screaming at anything "establishment" is bound to get you wired up. When I was listening to the album for the first time in a crowded place, I wanted to start whirling around like a dervish. But if the band's work falls on deaf ears or fails to inspire change, they won't bat an eye or lose sleep. Their "agony is priceless" and will keep people coming back as long as they're standing upright. 

(You can download n***** on the moon here. No word yet on when the second half of the powers that b,  jenny death, will drop but when it does you'll find it on the blog.)

word yet on when the second half of the powers that b, jenny death, will drop on Harvest/Third Worlds Records but when it does you’ll know - See more at: http://millsrecordcompany.com/n-moon-death-grips#sthash.UEF2aaBh.dpuf

No word yet on when the second half of the powers that b, jenny death, will drop on Harvest/Third Worlds Records but when it does you’ll know.) - See more at: http://millsrecordcompany.com/n-moon-death-grips#sthash.UEF2aaBh.dpuf

In Revue- 'We On 1' (DJ Rashad)

Hyperactive. Frenetic. Whirlwind. Exhilarating. Skittish. There's an abundance of words to describe pioneering footwork-artist DJ Rashad's We On 1 EP. Almost all of them revolve around the idea of speed. Which is understandable when you consider that Chicago-born footwork genre initially served to soundtrack dance battles not even the Flash could keep up with. But when a disembodied female vocal (sounding an awful lot like St. Vincent) floats above twittering electronics in "Do It Again", another word comes to mind: haunting.

Even without the news of Rashad's untimely death on April 26 at the age of 34, the ghostly descriptor would be appropriate. Like an apparition, the music of We On 1 lingers. The breaths of fresh air found in Double Cup cuts "Let U Go" and "Feelin" now last longer. Opener "We On 1"'s incantations of: "we on one", "Robitussin/pink-syrup" and "pour it up double cup" may come over a palpitating bassline, but the lyrics themselves don't whiz past the ears. Each steadily builds on the line prior like a game of Jenga. Though they last only seconds, sampled cries of "I want to" seem to hang in the air forever. Aforementioned highlight "Do It Again" is meticulously crafted in a similar fashion. However often rapturous thunderclaps and amphetamine-fed Oval stutters threaten to drown out the cries, they can't. When hedonistic recollections of "puffing on this sour" creep in, you get the sense they're meant to distract from the song's emotional writhing.

Despite an abundance of "distractions" on We On 1, none ever feel unnecessarily forced or cheap. The opening electronic bursts in "Somethin' Bout The Things You Do" could only be authored by someone who's stayed up until 3AM playing Mega Man.  Not to mention the breathy harmonica lovingly piped-in from a fast-forwarded version of Perfect Strangers. However hedonistic, commands of "pop that p****" littering the futuristic juke of "Come On Girl" are, they also serve as a callback to the days when rap-inflected dance music was meant to move your feet instead of make you think.

Constant callbacks are what keep a frequently subdued album from permanent resignation. Listening to We On 1 with the knowledge of Rashad's passing it's easy to become despondent. Double Cup brought him to the precipice of fame in the greater music community and a fall tour with fellow Chi-town native Chance the Rapper further extended his fan base. Everything was seemingly on the uptick until the tragic news broke. These continuous references keep the focus off of the news and firmly on the music. Hearing "something I" repeated over and over again renders it impossible to not wonder where those words originated. "We on one" could've been said by Drake or a "syrup sippin" David Banner and either would make sense. Figuring out who said what and when becomes a game that lasts long after Rashad’s pulverized drum machines whirl to a halt. Saying Rashad "belongs to the ages" is faulty because in life he always stood outside of time. 

We On 1 is out on vinyl now through Southern Belle Recordings and drops digitally May 13.