Restiform Bodies  Restiform Bodies LP Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Humms, rummaging through 80’s pop rubbish, clubish fits, dub hits, dumb numbing genius, heterogeneous, polished metroneopolitian politics … all of it the advent of “AVANT GARDE HIPHOP”? Or is that another example of “assigning genre names to all the bands that I don’t know”? I don’t know. And I don’t know this band despite listening to this for a few months trying to figure out what to say about it. First a question. Do you hate Anticon? Does Dose One trigger that angry “this isn’t hiphop” reaction? Then expect to be challenged further by the beats of Bomarr Monk and Agent 6 and the beats and lyrics of Telephone Jim Jesus and Passage. And perhaps don’t call this album “hiphop” if that is what it takes to actually get you to give it a chance to listen to it. The first thing one notices is the exceptional production, this is honestly original (and I know saying that isn’t original). You will probably find on this record a sample of every type of music you’ve been exposed to at some point in your life: electronic techno, drum n bass, melodic guitars, a lot of 80’s synths, Indian vocals, strings, this listing is getting boring, etc., etc., eccentric. And better yet the beats keep on changing, not simple loops, with simple drops, but unexpected change ups, appearances of amazing samples for too short periods of time. Yet it all fuses into a synthetic-organic unity called hiphop. Second, one notices that the entire album isn’t composed of “songs” in the traditional sense. Many of the track numbers are blended together with one or two or three other track numbers into a well-blended extended piece. These super-songs, so to speak, mesh together musical and lyrical themes in bewildering yet consistent ways, providing the listener with a feeling of wholeness that is missing from most hiphop albums these days. To the lyrics. Most of the work on this end is picked up by Passage. This emcee is remarkable. His words flutter by with various images and gnomic wisdom (ex. “working shitty jobs to support movie critics”) that hit the listener like a machine gun – catching one person here, another here, and doing so with different lines each time. Incoherent would be a negative way of putting it, but that ignores the fact that one can’t help but feel a unity lying behind it (check “Weather Balloon” or “3rd Reel Judy Garland” for example). A common criticism, like that of the above-mentioned Dose One, is the obvious lack of rhymes. Yet Passage is often tricking us, hiding rhymes inside untraditional structures. Not putting single rhymes on the end of a beat but in the middle, using assonance, and then breaking out in a complex rhyme structure just to show that the absence of traditional rhyme-styles isn’t due to a lack of skill or ability but to conscious choice. Their favourite free-verse structure allows for use of cadence, tempo changes, and subject matter that might not be tapped if he stuck to dictatorial formulas. Besides this their voices are unique, flow melodic, and most importantly, their insight and descriptions of the modern condition unparalleled. All I know is that when this CD is played for friends who aren’t particularly into hiphop they are amazed by it. “I’ve never heard anything like this before in my life – What is it?” “HIP-HOP,” I answer. It is good to see hiphop truly experimenting again. - Duncan A. Dionne © ukhh.com 1999 - 2002