Project: Mooncircle’s Rain Dog is a strange beast. In the realm of beat producers, his Venn diagram would intersect somewhere between Pogo’s childlike visions, Dntel’s future-retro work with The Postal Service, and the off-the-wall sample perfection of Blocktreat. Don’t believe such a great conjunction is possible outside of fucked up Jim Henson movies? Give his latest, “Two Words,” a spin, and tell me I’m wrong.
On this, his first full-length with my favorite Berlin beat label, the man also known as Samuel Evans perfects a tricky balancing act. Tracks are nostalgic, but not dated (“Felicity”). Overall, the music is uplifting, but never preachy (“Nerves Like a New Thread”). While often soulful, it’s not at all sullen (“Watch Over”). This is springtime mixtape music, full of rebirth and promises of warmer things to come.
By Rain Dog’s own admission, he’s never had much talent for songwriting in terms of lyrics. And yet, for such an honest assessment, he’s doing some really interesting things with his vocal sampling. Whether it;s Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, or Ella Fitzgerald, RD takes a different route from his peers. Whereas the latest thing seems to be for producers to utilize chopped vocals in place of synth or drum beats, effectively making them another instrument, this English beat head instead uses dialogue snippets, often unintelligible, to convey emotion. It would probably be fair to call it mostly wordless singing. It’s almost like he’s constructed a brand new language out of the most important pieces of an existing one.
I’ve got two words for Rain Dog myself. “Well played.”
