Alchemy, Alchemical, Alchemist

Finding The Ultimate Music Machine this morning at The Smoking Section, almost immediately proved to me that it was going to be a good day.

My initial introduction to the Alchemist was on the first Dilated Peoples album. The Platform came at a time when the underground of hip hop seemed to be bubbling up onto the radio. Jurassic 5 had just become stars and Dilated were soon to follow. And the fact that their first disc was full of pretty outstanding production and rife with interesting guest spots instantly endeared that release to me.

In the subsequent nine years or so, I can’t say that The Platform has remained in constant rotation – I actually don’t recall the last time I listened to that disc. But the same can be said for J5 even though Chali Tuna seems to guest on half of the cds I own. But it’s not the fault of the production on either one of those releases that has made me reticent to revisit them.

In the year 2000 rap wasn’t in its infancy, but it was surely a wild teenager. Listeners and fans hadn’t quite gotten over the blood shed a few years back. And with that piece of history firmly intact, it seems that those occurrences served to engorge the rap game with new faces and new talent. There has been a great deal of music released in every genre since the dawning of the new millennium, but rap discs might out number everything else.

There isn’t another genre that so values remixes, mix tapes and re-dos quite like hip hop. And because of that fans find that, often times, there’s just too much to listen to.

The Ultimate Music Machine is one of those mixes, but the sound that it checks in with is pretty unified. There aren’t any guests, there aren’t any Alchemist raps. It’s just music.

Even at a scant twenty five minutes, spread out over eight tracks it sounds as if there’s some actual forethought that went into preparing this release. Emanating from speakers, the sound isn’t quite futuristic – it is still based on ‘90s hip hop style after all. But there is an extra added element of futuristic keyboard work that was just coming into play at the time this disc was released. And while Alchemist still isn’t the most well known producer in the game, if one considers his laundry list of a resume, which includes work with Mobb Deep and Cypress Hill, maybe he should be considered as such.

This year should mark a change in his visibility as well. A planned recorded effort with Oh No – a Stones Throw associate and Madlib’s brother – seeks to ensure that. But that disc is slated to feature Alchemist rapping over some Oh No produced beats and vice versa. The results hopefully will be nothing short of entertaining. After all why would Oh No consent to such a project if he was skeptical of the possible form of the end product? He wouldn’t.