Son Raw is trading arms in countries whose names you can’t pronounce. According to conventional wisdom, Alchemist should be in the twilight of his career. After all, by the time they’d racked up this many years in the game, his mentors Muggs & Premier were settling into comfortable lives as established producers, trotting out well-worn […]

Jimmy Ness is the new Gilbert Gottfried.  Deep In The Night crystallizes the cheesy but affable Romanticism of the pre-Internet world. Onra’s new EP replicates the vibe of 80s and early 90s R&B, well before it stagnated into a series of David Guetta remixes. This five-track project conjures images of Jheri Curls, New Jack Swing […]

Son Raw thinks those seapunks are bound to dri-zown. Snarkier rap fans occasionally dismiss instrumental versions as background music or rapper food and for once they’d be right: Clams Casino’s latest instrumental tape is EXCELLENT background music and rapper food. That’s partially because his samples often sound like chopped n’ screwed whale songs but also […]

Jonah Bromwich also appreciates De Quincey. As someone who doesn’t instantly spot all eight samples that today’s wunderkind producers are cramming into their songs, I’m thankful that Miami newcomer Madeaux’s new track “Opium” sounds as good as it does. There’s no personal gratification with easter eggs heaped throughout the track’s four minutes—I mean, I recognize […]

Maybe it’s because the latter half of my college years were soundtracked by Labor Days, Float and Music by Cavelight, but I still consider Blockhead better than almost all of the new barrage of instrumental beatmakers who cultivate semi-anonymous public images to mask (presumably) boring personalities. Like, I know people are trying to get me […]

Evan Nabavian is considering taking a job in plastics. A man claiming to be recording himself taking a dump with his iPod screams, “I got video chat on this muthafuckaaa! I got a million games on this muthafuckaaa!” right before the song abruptly switches to an antiquated infomercial about the Internet. The distorted clips and […]

Jonah Bromwich’s favorite vacation spot is the Isle of Wight. There’s only so much concrete meaning that we can infer from beatmakers’ music. Without lyrics acting as signposts, all we have to go on is tempo, mood and the occasional sample. Not much really. That’s what makes it so fun when a producer like Shlohmo […]

Like dolphins and Dick Cheney, occasionally a beat needs to breathe. Burn One understands this well — dropping an instrumental mix-tape composed of his oven-roasted country soul feasts. Slow slinking smoked-out funk that aims for some imagined house band that the Dungeon Family never knew.  If I was in college, I would demand that this […]

Alfred the Great drops a bomb to rip up the nu-“California” stereotype established by Phantom Fucking Planet in 2002 and continued until whenever The OC croaked. How much would you rather hear this than that wrist-cutting-in-the-sunshine sop that soundtracked Adam Brody’s amateur neuroses? (Let the pro’s handle this, son.) Maybe I’m biased. Daedelus’s original last […]

Son Raw is the message, the medium, the content and the platform. The first thing you learn in a 100 level communications class is that the medium is the message, or at least that’s what we learn in Canada. We’re very proud of Marshal McLuhan. You see, he was a theorist who…ok I’ll stop before […]