Jel vs. Odd Nosdam: Anticon Mash-Up

There’s still fall out from the ten year anniversary show featuring Anticon crew folks a few weeks back.

Jel may have created two of the most interesting and varied instrumental works of the 2000s. Both Greenball (6 Months) and 10 Seconds (Mush) – each released in 2002 – showcased a talent whose musical interests can’t be confined to a single genre. Both of those affairs were all low fi, dirty beats accompanied by various mysterious samples. And in true deejay fashion, a great deal of those tracks barely clocked in at a minute in duration.

Similar in construction, tone and feel were Odd Nosdam’s Plan 9: Meat Your Hypnotist (Mush, 2001) and No More Wig for Ohio (Anticon, 2003). The earlier release was somehow able to patch together fifty-plus beats into a post-modern mash-up of odd-ball samples and atmosphere.

It’s interesting to see what each producer did next though.

Jel released Soft Money in 2006 with a scant twelve tracks making up the disc. It wasn’t a departure for the producer in terms of sound, but philosophically, the disc marked an attempt at a traditionally constructed album. Contrasting Soft Money with the 2007 release of Odd Nosdam’s, Level Live Wires, and listeners can find a modicum of similarities.

Both discs do ape that traditional ten to twelve track limit, but Odd Nosdam’s approach to music is where the true difference can be found. Level Live Wires is full of distortion and grinding synthetic noises that too many rap aficionados could understand as noise. However, Nosdam’s ability to seamlessly merge his musical affections yields, perhaps, his strongest disc to date.

But regardless of their recorded differences, both Odd Nosdam and Jel made appearances at the Anticon party a few weeks back. And Grand Good has been gracious enough to post a FEW TRACKS. Both of the tracks that are offered up come from Odd Nosdam’s last full length - but Jel gets the assist on each. “Kill Tone” is the standout. And on the album version – split into two tracks – there isn’t quite as wide a range of feeling. There seems to be a bit of extra, added space on the track here - used to good affect.

So, maybe this should really have just been and advertisement for Level Live Wire. But it wasn’t. These two producers, though, long after they stop working will, without question, be looked upon as musicians who worked within a medium to change and adapt it.