The HASH
ALBUM REVIEWS
of producers stabled at Stones Throw (which, as of this record, includes Riggins). That’s something of a help in narrowing a destination for Alone Together to drop its pin on the style map. But it’s of fleeting use. As the wizard behind the curtain, Riggins construes a deliberate pastiche: above all a percussive one that limps and lilts with style and exudes an august feel for rhythm, even if its grooves aren’t exactly probed as grounds for exposition. Brevity and cohesion keep this album in perpetual motion. (Just one song lasts beyond three
ALONE TOGETHER (Stones Throw)
minutes.) They also make it hard to take in anything
Karriem Riggins
smaller than chunks. To an extent, that uncompromising momentum means some of the most dazzling moments here are the 15-30 second upheavals not
There’s an unmistakable air of arrival streaming
even designated with a title—like ”I Need Love,”
through Alone Together. Karriem Riggins introduces
which fades after 40 seconds and returns with a
himself several times, though always indirectly: a bit
quixotic bout of vaguely Eastern trills; it’s a bridge
of admiring radio hosts sampled here, some live
that pleads to be more.
recordings of emcees announcing him to an audience there.
There’s a near pathologic avoidance of exposition that can leave some of the most immediately thrilling
And that seems appropriate. A first-call drummer
grooves feeling too short, or plain underdeveloped.
for leaders in both jazz and hip-hop (where he’s also
“K-Riffins,” a crystalline vamp of guitar filigree that
produced for Slum Village and Erykah Badu) for at
subsumes “I Need Love,” starts airborne but never
least a dozen years, Riggins is a stalwart. But he’s
really swoops or ascends from there.
only just making a mark in this capacity.
A similar thing could be said for a handful of these
And what capacity is that, exactly? One could ask
songs, but because Riggins’ notion of the long-play
this at any point in this sprawling confection. Its 34
(or, on the granular level, the countless 45s, tapes
bite-sized instrumentals glaze into one another like
and in-betweens scrawled into this album’s DNA) is
half-remembered sketches of glitch, lounge grooves
so evidently a studied one, it’s a knowing pace that
and Dilla-tossed hip-hop: cut short of completion and
Alone Together strikes, that keeps it from stalling–
reassembled, Burroughs-like, into a vivid tapestry.
and its heartbeat singular enough to make it worth
In places it’s cut from the same cloth spun by
the ride. —MSR
dusty beat abstractionists like Madlib or any number FALL–WINTER 2013 | 67