El-P Albums (4)
'I'll Sleep When You're Dead'
Release Date 3/16/2007
Tracks 13
Label Definitive Jux
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
With even commercial rap's fortunes on the decline during 2007 and Rjd2 going indie rock, the rap underground must have seemed like a lonely place to El-P. Perfect time for a community album featuring contributions from most of the Definitive Jux community as well as some expertly fitted outsiders (the Mars Volta, Nine Inch Nails, even Cat Power). As a producer, El-P's only gotten better since Fantastic Damage. If a Bomb Squad production made it sound like the Apocalypse was nigh, El-P's tracks come post-apocalypse -- no less heavy but dark, dusty, and brittle, marching numbly like an army of the popping and locking dead. I'll Sleep When You're Dead is definitely the best-produced and most powerful Definitive Jux record since Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein -- which makes it the best in underground rap during that time. Meanwhile, El-P's improved as a rapper as well. Although what he's trying to say or mean exactly is often in doubt, he's better than any of his past CoFlow compatriots at matching the air of doom inherent in the sound ("I might have been born yesterday, sir/But I stayed up all night"). By the time Chan Marshall of Cat Power wraps up the record -- playing a sampled soul siren -- I'll Sleep When You're Dead is revealed as one of the most powerful hip-hop albums of 2007. While Public Enemy exposed the hypocrisy and greed of the '80s, El-P reflects his era just as well; the sense of stress is palpable, an "after the end of the world" feeling that's waiting anxiously for something else to be born. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
El-P's entry into Thirsty Ear's Matthew Shipp-curated Blue Series is a compelling experiment in genre and sound collision. El-P doesn't rap on this set, nor does he saturate his mix with a truckload of effects. His compositions are skeletal frames on which to hang his mixological architecture of ambitious beats and skeletal samples, creating a tightly controlled dynamic inside which ambitious music is created. His collaborators are pianist Shipp, bassist William Parker, drummer Guillermo E. Brown, and a horn section comprised of Daniel Carter on reeds and flute, Steve Swell on trombone, and trumpet prodigy Roy Campbell. While many titles in the Blue Series catalog seem to be varied in terms of texture and dynamic, High Water is not. This feels like a conscious decision on the part of El-P. The palette is restricted atmospherically; his compositions are almost song-oriented -- at least in the beginning. The funky breaks on "Get Your Hand Off My Shoulder, Pig" offer a glance into the depths of his aesthetic: the grooves are midtempo with Shipp delving into his blues and soul book for vamps and a solo, Parker laying underneath and propelling the cadence and the horns floating over the top of those massive beats. Shipp is the first to meander, decentering the melody, pulling it apart phrase by phrase and then turning it inside out. All the while the horns shift harmonics while keeping the timbre and tension in clear view. On "Get Modal," the pop tune "Where Is the Love" becomes the jump-off place for investigation. Parker kicks its phrasing first before Shipp chimes in and confirms it. The skittering beats make the track feel like it is coming off a Tilt-a-Whirl, and a forgotten soul vocal is tossed into the background to rattle around just behind the horns. Meanwhile, Brown's counterpoint polyrhythms accent El-P's foreground sampling -- including a looped guitar riff from the ether -- and all of it is capped with brief yet tough solo from Campbell. The crackling strangeness in "Intrigue in the House of India" is indicative of the album's moodiness and rhythmic parlance. Shipp's carnival-inspired Afro-Cuban son riff opens out onto a carousel of sonic layering -- Carter's flute solo is the only thing that feels as if it were recorded on Planet Earth and Brown's weaving in and out of the synthetic rhythms keeps everything shimmering, skipping along into a void where entropy and suffocation would be the only choices were it not for Campbell once again cutting through the detritus and creating a melodic center. At about three minutes and 15 seconds into the track, the cut breaks open with big beats, Parker's cutting drone bass, and ambient sonics paring their way into the heart of the rhythmic soundscape. The theme that threads through the album is a complete reconsideration and rewiring of Charles Aznavour's "Yesterday When I Was Young." It is quoted at the beginning as the players get ready, in a faltering, stuttering, tentative attempt to encounter the subtleties at work in the tune's harmonic palette -- like the mood of the disc, it too is consciously restricted. When they get to its full articulation on "When the Moon Was Blue" with Harry Keys singing, the beats seem to separate from his voice, which invokes not only the ghost of Aznavour and his theatrical phrasing but also Louis Armstrong's with his underappreciated sense of melancholy. As horns offer droning bell-like lines across the entire top of the tune, El-P's beats pop under the vocal and Shipp and Parker wander the rounded edges of the melody's margin, a step away from complete implosion. Brown jumps through hoops and keeps the entire band -- mostly -- inside not only the time, but the tight lyrical consideration that makes up the body of the tune. In sum, it's a moody and haunting record with a few highs, a few lows, and lots of shades of blue to make your way through. Recommended. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Fantastic Damage'
Release Date 5/14/2002
Tracks 16
Label Definitive Jux
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Of all the boundary-pushing underground hip-hop acts who emerged in the late '90s, Company Flow was easily among the hardest and least compromising, spinning highly technical rhymes over buzzing, lo-fi beats with virtually no concessions to melody or polish. It comes as no surprise that onetime Company Flow leader El-P's solo debut, Fantastic Damage, takes a similar approach -- yet it's a logical and distinct progression from the sound that made Company Flow such seminal figures in underground rap. Fantastic Damage is even more aggressive and confrontational in its approach, and this time out, El-P himself is solely responsible for the sonic backdrop, producing the entire record by himself. If the production sounds a little fuller than Company Flow's essential Funcrusher Plus, it's likely because in many places, El-P has fleshed out his scuzzy, banging, stop-start percussion tracks with abrasive, distorted noise, which sounds like nothing so much as the furies unleashed. There are also plenty of tinny, blooping vintage synths that lend the music a cold, inhuman air -- and that's no doubt intentional, because Fantastic Damage paints a chilling portrait of contemporary society that's so bleak it often crosses into the apocalyptic. The music makes El-P's paranoid totalitarian nightmares totally convincing, not just because of its sheer wallop, but also in the subtler details that emerge with repeated listens -- the bizarre sound snippets and ghostly washes that seem to teeter on the edge of madness. Throughout the record, El-P proves he's one of the most technically gifted MCs of his time, spitting out near-impossible phrases and rhythmic variations that simply leave the listener's head spinning. Accessible it isn't, but Fantastic Damage constitutes some of the most challenging, lyrically dense hip-hop around, assembled by one of the genre's true independent mavericks. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide
'El-P Presents Cannibal Oxtrumentals'
Release Date 3/19/2002
Tracks 15
Label Def Jux
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Usually, instrumental hip-hop albums are of limited appeal to most consumers. Without the skillful rhyming of a charismatic MC, even the most artfully constructed beats simply are not especially intriguing to anyone except aspiring rappers looking for beats to rhyme over, and DJs looking for beats to use as segues. But with a handful of producers, instrumental rap LPs can be as compelling as the originals. El-P Presents Cannibal Oxtrumentals compiles the backing tracks from Cannibal Ox's 2001 release, The Cold Vein, and the album's main producer, Def Jux's formidable founder El-P (formerly of Company Flow) reveals himself to be as skillful a producer as the Automator or RZA, and even without Cannibal Ox's vocals, the instrumentals are still worth listening to. Mainly, the album sounds as if it were the soundtrack for an unmade film, much as the work Eno made in the 1970s, since the tracks have a distinct cinematic quality that allows them to cohere and flow beautifully. Furthermore, there are plenty of little touches that emerge that would otherwise be obscured by vocals, such as the electric guitar riffs in "Pigeon," or the cathedral-like organ in "A B-Boy's Alpha." Oxtrumentals serves not only as a worthy companion piece to The Cold Vein, but as a fascinating album in its own right. ~ Victor W. Valdivia, All Music Guide
