And Everything Else rises beyond being bland audio scenery, butnot enough to be great. After a string of respectable and, by thestandards of the industry, reasonably successful records, Nobody (knownto his mom as Elvin Estela) has kept mum regarding the reasons for hisswitch from beat-heavy hip-hoppin' Ubiquity to the less funky, moreelectronic Plug Research. Plug Research
And Everything Else more or less picks up where Pacific Drift: Western WaterMusic Vol. 1left off, with Estela proffering a set of twelve genre-bending,head-shop friendly collages. Right away Nobody distances himself fromlabelmates like AmmonContact and Daedalus: building off of psych-rockand acid records, he uses guitar and drum samples to fuel his musicrather than the more usual funk, jazz or blips and beeps, and even putstogether a interpretation of the Flaming Lips joint "What is theLight." Despite Nobody's hip-hop background and the reliance on beatstructures for his songs, rapping is noticeably scarce. There are somerhymes laid down in Spanish on "Jose De La Rues!!", but most of thevocalization come from the same psychedelic source material, with thenotable exception of a soft and easy guest spot from Mia Doi Todd.Nobody clearly has a more than just a "thing" for rock music and inparticular the perception-altering set, but he gets down and dirty withthe whole crate, and that sonic variance is And Everything Else'sgreatest asset. On "Wake Up and Smell the Millennium" he cuts andslices an electric harpsichord mixed in with some guitar riffs; on"Tori Oshi" (jointly crafted with Prefuse 73) he juggles some Easterninstrumentation with a Mingus-like free-jazz bassline, reverse-soundingorgans and other classic psychedelic sonic residue not unlike what'sfound on "Revolution #9." He may be unique from his label friends andmusical bedfellows, but Nobody lets And Everything Else fallinto the same trap—like so many records of this nature, you wonder atthe record's purpose/meaning. It's more Rothko than Norman Rockwell,but like Rothko, most people won't be able to understand what wasbehind it. After a few listens, it's not certain what Nobody's musewas. That nugget of uncertainty keeps it from being truly memorable.Undeniably eclectic, sometimes trippy, at others mesmerizing, it'smostly just agreeable.
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