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hippos in tanks

Album Review: James Ferraro – NYC, Hell 3:00 AM

by Rio Toro

james-ferraro-nyc-hell-3-am-review-11_1_2013

James Ferraro: NYC, Hell 3:00 AM

Similar Artists: Dean Blunt, D’eon, Inga Copeland

Genre: Experimental

Label: Hippos In Tanks

 

I can’t say I’ve ever completely enjoyed a release by James Ferraro. With that said, he is a fascinating producer, and one I have always listened to with a perked ear. Within recent years — since the release of Far Side Virtual (an album of his I’m still torn on) — he has been viewed as one of the more forward thinking producers within the experimental realms. After the bizarre eccentricities (ads, Microsoft voices) that became a part of his sound with Far Side Virtual, he has moved down a darker, more R&B influenced path. Sushi, the album he introduced many of these new themes on, was a pull away from his hyper conceptual work, and with his Cold mixtape earlier this year — with the emphasis largely being put on the beats and Ferraro’s own voice — it seemed he was moving in a more accessible, or at least more digestible, direction.

However, NYC, Hell 3:00 AM sees Ferraro taking his newly found sounds and crafting them into a dense, multifaceted 60 minute album that recaptures his love for overarching conceptual design. As the title suggests, this album was inspired by NYC at its darkest, most depressed, and most surreal. On these terms, Ferraro has conquered, as the album is synonymous with subway systems, a lack of oxygen, and towering grey skyscrapers that keep you locked in like a prison. This is a new kind of darkness that Ferraro is playing with, and he’s not the least bit afraid to make us feel uncomfortable. While people have been attempting to fit Ferraro’s work in with the current wave of ghostly R&B — popularized by How To Dress Well, The Weeknd, etc. — in reality there is little comparison. While I don’t feel this direction is James’ attempt to make a mockery out of this style, he does play up the humor every once in a while. “Cheek Bones”, one of the lengthier, and even dancier tracks, has the main lyric of /I don’t want cancer, but these cigarettes give me cancer/ and there are similar moments of irony played out through the album. It’s for this reason that James’ closest comparison is label mate Dean Blunt, who took his turning step as a vocalist on “The Redeemer”, released earlier this year. Both have a sound that is impossible to categorize, and their music is frequently intoxicating because of it.

These 16 songs are often skeletal, and bereft of many components that would have suited them nicely. Even the beats, which Ferraro has previously piled layer on top of layer, are conspicuously absent for minutes at a time. What is there, however, is enveloping, and harrowing in its tone. This will likely go down as James’ ambient period, as he seems much more concerned with creating a dense, cataclysmic atmosphere rather than writing solid hooks…or poetic lyrics…or any of the other things an artist would add to their music to assure people would enjoy it. Take the opener, which begins with a loop of a feminine Microsoft voice saying “money” over and over again; we keep expecting a beat to drop in, but it never does, in turn introducing the album’s neglect towards our expectations.

Many tracks, especially during the first half of the album, feature organic instrumentation such as bells, as if they are being heard from a far away church, and they act as the one safe haven in a land crawling with filth. The field recordings — which pull from idle chatter to police sirens, to 9/11 news reports — add to the tense feeling that becomes burrowed within your skin through the endurance testing running time.

Somehow, it works though. If only for its uncategorizable mood and consistently dense atmosphere, NYC Hell 3:00 AM, is an unforgettable work. It’s an album’s album: one that you couldn’t listen to a lot — or in this case, barely at all — but when that right time comes, it will be right there at the back of your mind begging you to explore its world one more time.

 

Track Listing:

1.) Intro

2.) Fake Pain*

3.) QR JR

4.) Close Ups*

5.) Beautiful John K.

6.) Stuck 1

7.) City Smells

8.) Upper East Side Pussy*

9.) Eternal Condition

10.) Stuck 2

11.) Niggas

12.) Stuck 3 (RATS)

13.) Cheek Bones*

14.) Vanity

15.) Irreplaceable*

16.) Nushawn

Album Highlight – *

Filed Under: ENTERTAINMENT, MUSIC, OPINION, REVIEWS Tagged With: 3:00 am, experimental, hell, hippos in tanks, james ferraro, music review, NYC

Album Review: Arca – &&&&&

by Rio Toro

Arca-

Arca: &&&&&

Similar Artists: Actress, Laurel Halo, Dean Blunt, Shackleton

Genre: Post-Everything

Label: Hippos In Tanks

 

Great producers are not uncommon in today’s electronic music scene, but as I see it, there are very few that one could actually call “inspiring”; like how J Dilla’s nearly posthumous Donuts led to a slew of L.A. Hip-hop based producers going down a more experimental and sample based approach. More often than not, when something is deemed “new” — like every Tri-Angle release most surely will be — it is more often “new” in the way that it contains modern sound design and software enabled sleekness rather than “new” in the sense that it contains original ideas and aesthetics. It can seem at times like there is little discovery left to be had in terms of musical inventiveness, as almost everything can be sorted into its own micro-genre with relative ease. This is the reason why there is so much clutter in the field of experimentalism lately, as it is where artists seek refuge and take pride in saying “fuck you!” to the norms. However, the most promising producers might be the ones who can pull off being incomparably abstract yet catchy at the same time. It is these producers that are guaranteed to have successful careers.

Brooklyn based/Venezuelan born producer Alejandro Ghersi, who records as Arca, happens to have more than a few tricks up his sleeves, and despite the fact that he has yet to release a full-length worth of material, he is already proving that he is a one of a kind producer. Quite simply, Arca’s music sounds post-everything (post-internet?), and is futuristic in a not such an easily describable way. Adjectives I have came up with so far are kaleidoscopic, celestial, frigid, and tropical (Clearly, I haven’t done a very good job), but he is also clearly infatuated with hip-hop — at least the distorted kind — and the samples he uses manage to give the music its accessibility. It somehow isn’t as weird as label mates Dean Blunt or James Ferraro, although it’s just as experimentally based if not more so. Needless to say, even when his music fills us with so much intrigue, he’s not the easiest artist to write about

As you might imagine, Arca is quite the enigmatic figure. Even after the release of his critically acclaimed Stretch 2 EP, it was quite surprising to see Arca listed with 4 production credits on Yeezus seeing how so little is known of him. Kanye — or whoever may have sought him out — obviously saw that his productions were surgically precise and meticulously detailed yet raw and obviously supportive of a DIY mentality; this is how I can see him being potentially inspiring for future producers. Just listen to the way he loops vocals on “Fossil”, or the shape shifting piano chords on “Century”, or the way he can sound chaotic and adventurous while still maintaining tightly controlled underneath; it’s all you need to hear to take notice of his exceptionality.

&&&&& is a free 25 minute mixtape by Arca released on Hippos in Tanks. There are 14 tracks each running around 2 minutes, but I recommend that you don’t look at the song titles and let it all flow over you as one continuous piece; like the way it’s presented on the artist’s soundcloud page. It’s by far his most mind altering statement to date, and like the gif’s of the cover art being played on a loop on his webpage ( http://www.arca1000000.com/ ), it can also be rather frightening. If there was a social setting you would be allowed to play this mix in, it would be at 5 in the morning after a party when everyone is already dazed and bent out of their minds. If the drug culture gets a hold of this mix — and they surely will — it would be used in unison with the most intense psychotropics (DMT for example), both because it seems to open a portal to a different world as well as its short running time (DMT only lasts about 25 minutes).

The tracks are diverse, and they are based around an incredibly unique sound palette that turns their influences on their heads. Take opener “Knot” for example, which takes a hyper melodic kosmiche inspired keyboard pattern to verifiable extremes of frequencies. He turns ugly, dated sounds and makes them interesting again — like the ancient hip-hop beats and ambient textures that pervade the mix. Even at the most high pitched moments, it sounds majestic instead of noisy, and we never once feel like Arca doesn’t know what he’s doing.

There are moments on &&&&& where a musical style is at play that I really feel hasn’t been explored before. Better yet, it doesn’t feel like a fluke either. The 14 tracks here express a smorgasbord of intriguing musical developments and is essential for anyone even slightly interested in experimental music. It may only be a mixtape — and a brief one at that — but it just may happen to rival the best full lengths of the year.

 

Track Listing:

1.) Knot*

2.) Harness

3.) Fossil*

4.) Feminine

5.) Anaesthetic*

6.) Coin

7.) Century*

8.) Mother

9.) Hallucinogen

10.) Pinch*

11.) DM True

12.) Waste

13.) Pure Anna

14.) Obelisk*

 

Album Highlight – *

Filed Under: ENTERTAINMENT, MUSIC, OPINION, REVIEWS Tagged With: &&&&&, arca, experimental, hippos in tanks, post everything

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