Posted on 06/05/2005

 

Genre labels are funny, evil things. Hip-hop heads hardly have the patience for it; outside of the temporally nebulous old school / new school divisions, and the relatively recent elitist critique of "backpackers", they haven't highlighted nearly as many splinters as the electronic genres, subgenres, corollary phyla and other branches on the tree. Worse yet, when other genres rip off hip-hop aesthetics, or there's a genuine collaboration, people just throw the "-hop" suffix at the end, exemplified by the forever doomed yet tragically long-lived "trip-hop" (a term that's been abused more than a seven-year old boy at Neverland).

In the interest of abusing terms, and in a vain attempt at coining expressions (which, like my "bizz-err" when it's cold, probably won't catch on), here's a few for you to describe 13 & God's self-titled debut: glitch-hop, lap(top)-hop, synth-bap (think of boom-bap), electro-rap experimentalism ... you get the picture.

It's not just the reviewers that have to break it down as such - the last term is from 13+God's very own promo material. In this day and age of Radiohead and The Postal Service's rock meets electronica excursions, this collaboration represented here isn't so forced as it might seem: you're getting The Notwist, a German punk band turned IDM overlords, and Themselves, an avant-hop (ah, there's another one!) crew out of the Bay area.

Musically the album is fully-realized and preternaturally gorgeous. Piano anchors the album; no matter how spacey the beats may get, and they do get rather extraterrestrial on occasion, the beautifully dutiful piano work allows the listener to stay attached to something familiar. The synth-bap designation isn't a complete joke. The album doesn't rip off hip hop's hard-hitting bass kick & snare, but the percussion still hits with a rhythmic force without going off on neck-snapping stutter-step tangents. Besides serving to drive the music with a rocking force, 13 & God even pull a few tricks out of their musical grab-bag, like the incredible bongos on "Ghostwork". The music is expansive and, despite the walls of electronic burbles, shimmers with a warmth that other artists tend to abandon when carving such artificial landscapes. In the album's best moments, it blends seamlessly with the harmonizing of its vocal members, both sung and rapped.

"If" highlights the collaboration's potential. The track begins with a drumbeat and a percussive string blast, brings in a simple but propulsive guitar loop to accompany the overdubbed singing of Markus Acher, then drops to the drums to provide a bare sheen for Dose One's atypically understated rap to close. Elsewhere, it's never forced, but it's the listener’s responsibility to decide if Dose One's nasal drawl provides the chocolate to Notwists' creamy but chunky peanut butter (and if you want to be so untoward as to suggest that it may sometimes undermine instead of supplement the soundscapes of the album, well then, this reviewer will let you).

The choice of "Low Heaven" to begin the album actually highlights Dose One’s vocals at their most idiosyncratic, but they're put to better narrative effect on the rolling tones of "Soft Atlas", an abstract rumination on the earth being unmoored from his orbital axis. If music is universal, with lyricism being somewhat less so, you may find the voices on the album occasionally grating in contrast to the lush instrumentalism. Still, on an album like 13+God, which pushes the edges; Themselves' lyricism buttresses the future music of the project, and their adaptive flows ride a complex musical landscape that would certainly cause others to founder.

13+God provides that rare treat, an album that rewards repeated listenings, whether it's just to get used to the novel musicianship or to gather in the nuance and the splendor contained within. When all the labels and classifications drop away, you're left with good, interesting music; and the hope that all the weird blended aesthetics of the future can provide a concoction as smoothly mixed.