"Fantastic Damage" is a perfect description for this album of denselylayered beats that serve as a soundtrack for El-P's tour through adystopian urbanscape. Almost every beat on the album is so rich andevocative it seems a shame that El-P has to bark over almost every oneof them. Some of his lyrical concepts work well, as on the track"Stepfather Factory" where he effectively constructs and deconstructs acompany that churns out indistinguishable, abusive father figures. Thisis one of the few tracks where he takes his vocals down to aconversational level and it works really well. On too much of the albumthough, his vocals come off as monotonous yelling which undermines thepower of his intelligent lyrics. El-P has an uncommon problem for anMC—so much he needs to say that he is unable to fit all of his lyricsinto his allotted lines of verse. This problem of too many words to goaround is particularly noticeable on the verses of "Truancy". When heslows the rhymes down during the chorus, each lyric becomes more potentand fits well into the rhythm. He also uses an interesting approach atthe beginning of "Dead Disnee" where he adjusts his cadence and rhymescheme to mimic that of the early De La Soul single "Plug Tunin'".While paying respect to an earlier, more creative era of hip-hop, healso demonstrates how a varied rhyme style can compliment a song.Unfortunately, the rest of the song falls into his same abrasivelymonotonous pattern. Most of the album's lyrical content falls into the"conscious lyrics" category—which makes some of the slips into standardhip-hop homophobia all the more frustrating. But all M.C. criticism aside, the beats are consistently varied and noloop is repeated long enough to wear out its welcome. El-P shows hisstrongest talent lies in production by introducing many experimentalsounds and effects rarely added to the hip-hop mix. He uses lots ofdistorted synths and electric guitar samples and mixes them overprogrammed, organic sounding drums to head-nodding affect. My favoritemoments in the album all occur when he turns off the vocals for astretch and lets his instrumentals shine. DJ Abilities compliments thelayered beats successfully by adding texture without showing off hisspeed. His best contribution is in the middle of "Delorian" where heuses his scratches as one of the instruments in the band rather than asa solo spotlight.
I will certainly be looking out for a future version of "FantasticDamage" instrumentals because the beats are innovative and I would liketo hear how each one sounds on its own. If you can get through 70minutes worth of severe vocals, the album does go out on one of itsstrongest notes with the grandly cinematic final track, "Blood". And besure to listen for that tight instrumental at the end that kicks intohigh gear after the vocals have faded away.
samples:
Read More
