Beans

Tomorrow Right Now

(Warp, 2003)

Anti-Pop Consortium no longer exists and to most that doesn’t mean too much. But in the realm of underground hip-hop it means that there are probably going be a lot of interesting solo projects. Anti-Pop reportedly split up earlier this year and since members have been touring as well as recording. However, the first of these solo albums to appear is that of Beans. Warp, which mostly deals in electronic music, has seen fit to put out Tomorrow Right Now.

After unwrapping the record and being sucked into the austere looking picture of Beans in a pair of sun glasses on the front and a picture of the red stripe posted on the back of his head as well as the back of the album, plop it down in the player and prepare yourself. El-P has been touted as the most innovative beat maker in hip-hop of late, but simply by listening to Tomorrow Right Now it seems that Beans could now be in contention for that title. There are three instrumental tracks (“Sickle Cell Hysteria”, “Rose Periwinkle Plum”, “Xon”) on this offering, all of them differ in length and scope, but all of them are exceedingly electronic. Beans, for the most part, eschews the boom-bap of rap in lieu of pushing into new territory: the further merging of hip-hop and electronic music. There are drum programs, there are steady bass lines, but there are also electronic burps and gurgles, sounds and noises. The record’s rife with too many quality tracks to comment upon individually, but “Crave” easily sums up the album in one line. Beans simply figures that there are “Too many MCs and not enough listeners”. True.

Alif Tree

French Cuisine

(Compost Records, 2005)

I don’t know if I would have been able to identify this as a European outing judging the album by the art work on the front, but I could have made a good guess. Even with the solid colored squares and circles that are displayed for the listener to see, the music, at least the first half of the album is engorged with European style electronic hip hop. On the first few tracks, Nina Simone and Shirley Horn are sampled over top of minimal, lo-fi beats with jazz inclinations and strings. That in and of itself would have been enough for me to guess not only Europe, but France, specifically, as the birth place of this album.

Alif Tree has a studio in the suburbs of Paris where he finds the laid back atmosphere conducive to creating his albums and myriad production work. After the four tracks most related to hip hop on this disc, the sound veers drastically towards laid back piano lines and electronic production flourishes. Not to say that this is a dance album, but there is certainly a lot of behind the boards work by the producer to be appreciated here.

Ending an album can frequently be difficult, and Alif Tree attempts to draw this affair to a close with an homage to minimalist composer Steven Reich. It works out well, sending a message of appreciation to the composer while giving listeners a multi-layered finale to an interesting, if not somewhat schizophrenic album.