The title of Exile’s latest long player is at once a throw back to early days as well as a proclamation of new fangled music distribution.

Named Radio AM/FM it’d be easy to simply understand the Los Angeles based producer to be commenting on the state of radio – past and present. The medium at one point worked as a child’s imagination, spitting out song after song by unseen performers. Anyone could be behind those notes, those harmonies and progressions. And with the expansion of FM radio in the seventies, there should have been an even greater wealth of music to discover. Of course, radio’s wound up being nothing but nonsense. And really, who wants to hear a pre-determined playlist, re-spun every few hours.

But Radio AM/FM is a pronouncement that all those shambolic songs on all those stations, some still operating, some just memories, served as a basis for what hip hop has become. Basing a track on a sample by the O’Jays or Metallica is acceptable. One might come off drastically different than the other, but the results could both be surprisingly sturdy. And now that we’re all beyond the radio – and maybe beyond subscription radio stations in cars as well – the internet functions in the same way as AM/FM did in the past. Now, though, there’s supplemental material for listeners to ordain themselves critical masters, fans or detractors.

Exile’s new disc, though, probably won’t have too many detractors.

Surprisingly, the disc opens with a few remixes. “In Love,” from the Milo1 songbook presents itself as something not distant from the current So Cal hip hop cum electro style that Flying Lotus, Baths and whoever else are mining. That doesn’t make the third track on this disc a bummer. It does, very early on, set the mood for where the disc is headed.

Kicking around for a while, but gaining a decent amount of national attention alongside Blu, it’s not a shock that the emcee crops up on “Love Line.” Exile’s beat seems properly suited to the rapper’s general style – one that he’s no doubt familiar with from earlier efforts. The laid back soul and intermittent blip blop of an analog keyboard pushes the song slowly forward. If there are objections anywhere, it has nothing to do with the production. Instead, the writing for this track – and a few other efforts here – don’t seem capable of matching Exile’s skill. That’s how good the disc is.