Album Picks, Needle to the Groove

Hiss Golden Messenger

Quietly Blowing It (Merge Records) Release date: June 25, 2021 Written by Taran Escobar-Ausman

Hailing from North Carolina, MC Taylor, with his band Hiss Golden Messenger, has been churning out an impressive depth of work, releasing an album almost every year since 2009. While their sound is often categorized as alt-folk or roots rock, the band draws from many influences and incorporates elements of jazz, funk, dub, gospel, and soul. At the heart of all their recordings, however, is Taylor’s soulful singing and songwriting that continually aims to make sense of the vicissitudes and contradictions of being human. As his multi-instrumentalist collaborator, Josh Kaufman, relates, Taylor has “a prolific bone to pick with the universe.”

Taylor continues to existentially prod at the universe with the new LP, Quietly Blowing It, which was largely written and recorded at the beginning of the pandemic. As with many new recording projects these days, the album processes external realities during a year of isolated self-reflection. Quietly Blowing It becomes as much Taylor’s own self-reckoning with his demons as it is a mirror held up to our own journeys as a collective. On the pastoral groove of “Glory Strums,” Taylor offers a deep selfcritique as he sings, “I know that there’s good in me / Why’s it such a hard time?” The song, “If It Comes in the Morning,” however, holds everyone accountable as Taylor implores the listener to lay down their “sword and shield” as “There’s a spade if you’re willing / To work on the building.”

What has always been the band’s strength is building interest from subtle melodies and humble arrangements. It’s what Taylor calls “impressionistic tones,” such as on “Painted Houses,” which softly builds before giving way to the sound of crickets at night. Quietly Blowing It introduces a new chapter for the band. There is a newfound center of warmth and calm to the proceedings, a center where Taylor seeks existential resolution and where he also managed to build a safe sanctuary to do just that.

Favorite track: “Quietly Blowing It” HISSGOLDENMESSENGER.COM

Curated by Needle to the Groove Instagram: needletothegrooverecords

Serengeti

KDXMPC (Cohn Corporation) Release date: November 9, 2020 Written by Demone Carter

Calling a rapper a character feels redundant. Despite the supposed emphasis on realness, every rapper is on some level creating a character or alter ego. Some take this character creation farther than others. Chicago-bred rapper Serengeti creates absurdist personas and breathes life into them in a way that recalls Kool Keith as much as Kurt Vonnegut. For the uninitiated, a good starting point is his 2012 song “Dennehy,” in which Serengeti plays the role of Kenny Dennis, a caterpillar mustached, bratwurst eating, Chicago Bears fan, whose favorite actor is Brian Dennehy. It’s difficult to understand how bizarre it is for a rapper to inhabit such a role and not just for one song or album but as an ongoing bit.

Which brings me to Serengeti’s 2020 release, KDXMPC. This album feels like an Easter egg in the Kenny Dennis multiverse. Released in the same year as Serengeti’s masterpiece, Ajai, which chronicles an obsessive sneaker head (Kenny Dennis makes an appearance on Ajai as well), KDXMPC is less coherent than Ajai but still a righteously good time. KDXMPC could be perceived as a side story about Kenny Dennis, appearing as a repairman who fixes the iconic Akai MPC beat machine. The intro track, “MPC Jingle,” inhabits the tenuous spot between a great rap song and comedic parody without comprising the tenets of either form. Other standout cuts include “Thought Process,” “Hal and Sophie,” and the hilariously irreverent “Gyro.”

KDXMPC is a collection of stream-of-conscious short stories over minimal boom bap style beats. It would be a mistake for listeners to try and discern a cohesive narrative from it all. At his best Serengeti gives us interesting characters in absurd situations (think Wes Anderson over sample loops). This seems to be a selfproduced project (no additional beat makers are credited). The beats are simple but bouncy, the perfect setting for Serengeti’s art house comedy.

Favorite track: “Gyro” KENNYDENNIS.BANDCAMP.COM

Mach-Hommy

Balens Cho (Hot Candle) (Mach-Hommy Inc.) Release date: December 4, 2021 Written by Demone Carter

It’s 2021 and clout chasing is the order of the day. Artists, content creators, and your auntie from Minnesota are all waring for a small slice of the attention economy on a daily basis. In this landscape, it’s hard to believe that Haitian-American rapper Mach-Hommy has cultivated that most precious commodity, mystique. The masked rapper has carved out a stellar career in the most counter-intuitive way. He has successfully camouflaged his identity and has for the most part eschewed the music-streaming Ponzi scheme in which artists trade their life’s work for fractional pennies on the dollar.

This year Hommy stepped out of the reclusive shadow realm and delivered two critically acclaimed albums for mass consumption. Hommy’s first offering of 2021, Pray for Haiti, a legitimate album of the contender, explored Hommy’s personal accent and the western world’s exploitation of his beloved mother country. On his latest release, Balens Cho (Hot Candles), Hommy continues his advocacy for Haiti and also peels back the curtain ever so slightly to reveal a bit of his origin story.

On the opening track, Labou Mach wails “I got it from the mud swear to god!” over a soul-piercing horn loop. From the outset, Hommy’s full complement of gifts is on display. He has a rare combination of expert craftsmanship with heartfelt artistry which comes through from start to finish on Balens Cho. Hommy’s raps are rich with allusions and references but not weighed down by them. On the menacingly bright track, “Lajan Sal,” Hommy boasts, “Ain’t no Jesse Jack in this Hommy Town,” a bar that reaches back to a controversy from Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign for material in a clever way that doesn’t feel like a stretch at all.

The specter of Jay-Z looms large on this album with Hommy making several callbacks to iconic Hova lines. Songs like “Wooden Nickels” and “Self Luh” also feel like they are inspired by Jay-Z’s introspective masterpiece, 4:44. To make the Hova to Hommy line complete, Mach also has the Jay-Z gift of picking great beats to rap over. Nicholas Craven, Conductor Williams, and the late great Ras G provide the perfect foundation for MachHommy’s self-described “gibberish and monotone raps.”

Favorite track: “Separation of the Sheep and the Goats” MACH-HOMMY.COM Madlib and Four Tet

Sound Ancestors (Madlib Invasion) Release date: January 29, 2021 Written by David Ma

On paper this album should be a master class between two iconic artists—renowned experimental producer Four Tet and underground beatsmith extraordinaire Madlib. What we got somehow surpassed expectations, a rarity when it comes to ballyhooed projects such as these. Any trepidation of their combined prowess quickly disintegrated after their single “Road of the Lonely Ones” came out to glowing reviews. Haunting vocal samples, snappy drums, and textures that refine themselves as the song moves along punctuate the entire track, a reflection of the musical conversation heard on the LP as a whole.

Four Tet, a mainstay in the early aughts whose colorful beats that were able to exist in both the hip-hop and experimental realms, is no stranger to various remixes and collaborations. His typical orchestration involves slow buildups that give way to tremendous finales, as well as a pastiche approach that involves glitches and obscure reworked samples. A standout in his catalogue is a remix he did for Madvillain, an underground classic rap album if there ever was one. The album, of course, features one of rap’s most wildly creative and beloved MCs, MF DOOM, with its production helmed by Madlib.

Madlib is one of the most vaunted producers in rap history as well as one of the most prolific. The aforementioned Madvillain was huge, but so are his recent projects with Freddie Gibbs, as well as past work under the nom de plume, Quasimoto. Active since the ’90s, Madlib has since gone on to produce for the likes of Kanye and Kendrick Lamar. Currently, listeners have been waiting with baited breath when it was revealed that he produced the new Black Star album, the follow-up to the venerated 1998 release from Talib Kweli and Mos Def aka Yasiin Bey.

Sound Ancestors benefits not only from the combined experience of the two, but also because it comes off wise, offering soundscapes that retract and expand with ease, never trying too hard musically or conceptually. It works as both background and foreground music and delivers uncompromising quality with a noticeable patience to the music—not unlike the careers of Four Tet and Madlib themselves. For an album such as this, anything less would’ve been a travesty.

Favorite track: “Hopprock” MADLIB.BANDCAMP.COM