Mush
Mush Records is churning out independent, largely instrumental hip hop records as if there was an urgent and fevered demand for crate after crate of lo-fi rare grooves distilled into abstract hip hop. While you can make the argument that instrumental hip hop is picking up the DIY torch that punks set down years ago, the unfortunate result is that the mass catalog of self-produced titles available offers the prospective listener with an impossibly broad range of records to weed through. Fat Jon The Ample Soul Physician has thrown his beats into the mix with 'Wave Motion,' a largely uninspiring nodder that pushes all the right hip hop buttons but fails to ignite anything. The low-fidelity sound of tracks like "Watch Out" undermines the essential groove that Fat Jon is trying to create by drowning the sampled beats and lazy jazz riffs in what sounds like a demo-quality mix. There is good distortion and there is bad distortion, and the muddied kick drums and muffled bass here are definitely the latter. I don't know if there's an overriding feeling in the abstract hip hop community that if a track is too polished, that it isn't 'real,' but most of these tracks fail to inspire anything other than a simple tap of the foot. More careful attention to the knobs during the mix wouldn't save everything on 'Wave Motion,' however. Similar releases by instrumental heavyweights like DJ Vadim and DJ Krush demonstrate that instrumental hip hop can be expressive sans vocals, and other releases on Mush live up to that standard, but 'Wave Motion' has a way to go. This is the perfect soundtrack to your neighborhood's trendy coffee house, but it doesn't offer much more than a beat to sip your drinks by.
Mush Records is churning out independent, largely instrumental hip hop records as if there was an urgent and fevered demand for crate after crate of lo-fi rare grooves distilled into abstract hip hop. While you can make the argument that instrumental hip hop is picking up the DIY torch that punks set down years ago, the unfortunate result is that the mass catalog of self-produced titles available offers the prospective listener with an impossibly broad range of records to weed through. Fat Jon The Ample Soul Physician has thrown his beats into the mix with 'Wave Motion,' a largely uninspiring nodder that pushes all the right hip hop buttons but fails to ignite anything. The low-fidelity sound of tracks like "Watch Out" undermines the essential groove that Fat Jon is trying to create by drowning the sampled beats and lazy jazz riffs in what sounds like a demo-quality mix. There is good distortion and there is bad distortion, and the muddied kick drums and muffled bass here are definitely the latter. I don't know if there's an overriding feeling in the abstract hip hop community that if a track is too polished, that it isn't 'real,' but most of these tracks fail to inspire anything other than a simple tap of the foot. More careful attention to the knobs during the mix wouldn't save everything on 'Wave Motion,' however. Similar releases by instrumental heavyweights like DJ Vadim and DJ Krush demonstrate that instrumental hip hop can be expressive sans vocals, and other releases on Mush live up to that standard, but 'Wave Motion' has a way to go. This is the perfect soundtrack to your neighborhood's trendy coffee house, but it doesn't offer much more than a beat to sip your drinks by. samples:
Read More
