Chris Daly rarely flares at the nostrils
Come April 29th, Mello Music Group beatsmith Apollo Brown will drop his latest beast, Thirty Eight, an instrumental soundtrack that so far sounds like a crate digger’s dream for a movie that doesn’t exist, but I damn sure hope someone films. I don’t like to use press release quotes, but it’s kind of hard to argue with this one: The sound falls somewhere between the end of 70s heroin and the beginning of 80s crack, like day prostitution. I’m not even sure I fully grasp that one, but take a listen and tell me it’s not spot on. Plus, day prostitution.
To whet appetites, Brown just dropped “Cigarette Burns,” a three-track EP with highlights from the as-yet-to-be-released full-length. Dusty and musty, each song is filled with static and crackle, plus the occasional cigarette burn (hence the name). If you like your beats of the Blaxploitation variety, these jams are for you. Vocals are reduced to snippets to provide the greatest emotional impact, creating a glove-like fit for the accompanying soul, R&B, funk and hip-hop samples that surround them.
These songs cast shadows of haunted men in crumbling buildings doing things of which you can rest assured The Man would not approve. Think RZA with less kung-fu or early Eric B. if you need a barometer. Or you could just pop over to Bandcamp, pay the required email address and zip code (never really understood the request for the latter, but who am I?), and download these aural goodies along with some dope photography from legendary shutterbug Jeremy Deputat as he visually captures the smoked out world Brown so dutifully recreates. After that, smoke ’em if you got ’em.
