version

Well-known member

Lead sounds like it's breaking up through an intercom or slipping on VHS, Cardi being recorded looking like Max Headroom on the cover, Invasion of Privacy - her privacy's being invaded through constant coverage, a life on film, and so is ours. She's forcing her way into and disrupting our broadcast.

AraabMuzik's trance thing.

Whole thing sounds huge, cavernous. The lead and vocals bouncing off the surfaces of a hangar, warehouse, industrial space and attacking from every angle.

Scraping, percussive sounds like diamonds crushed under foot or a flattened gunshot.
 

forclosure

Well-known member

Immediatly i hear that filtered dark bass i assume this came out around 1995 (sure enough im right), skeletal like trying to get back home at midnight you just know some awful shits about to go down.

I really like this Organized were really good at these kind of hyperdetailed sketches where theyre based around 1 idea (Silver Bullet,Hate,Black Sunday) and they explore it through all the details reminds me of that one Krumbsnatcha track "gettin closer to god" where he talks about gettin shot. i kinda preferred the first verse though O.C.s directness plays off Monch really well who around this time was really going for it in terms of like rhyme schemes (i didnt stutter i shudder to think etc) and that. Ive always really liked Monch but god i feel like hes backed himself into a corner wanting really placid beats he needs shit like this or weirder.

Not to say Prince Po is bad i like him the bit where his niece gets grabbed is harrowing,its got a "lived in" kinda quality where it feels like they talk about this kinda shit cause one of them probably experienced something like this, its different from say the Kwelis,Defs and them where it felt like theres a distance.

Wierdly i can see this fitting on Internal Affairs even though that album came out like 4 years after this
 

luka

Well-known member
Immediatly i hear that filtered dark bass i assume this came out around 1995 (sure enough im right), skeletal like trying to get back home at midnight you just know some awful shits about to go down.

I really like this Organized were really good at these kind of hyperdetailed sketches where theyre based around 1 idea (Silver Bullet,Hate,Black Sunday) and they explore it through all the details reminds me of that one Krumbsnatcha track "gettin closer to god" where he talks about gettin shot. i kinda preferred the first verse though O.C.s directness plays off Monch really well who around this time was really going for it in terms of like rhyme schemes (i didnt stutter i shudder to think etc) and that. Ive always really liked Monch but god i feel like hes backed himself into a corner wanting really placid beats he needs shit like this or weirder.

Not to say Prince Po is bad i like him the bit where his niece gets grabbed is harrowing,its got a "lived in" kinda quality where it feels like they talk about this kinda shit cause one of them probably experienced something like this, its different from say the Kwelis,Defs and them where it felt like theres a distance.

Wierdly i can see this fitting on Internal Affairs even though that album came out like 4 years after this

I agree. He's sabotaged his career by veering into jazzy, organic, holy souly territory. It's a great shame. He needs angles and sharp edges and instead he's chosen these soft bubble bath soundworlds.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
It's the danger of convincing 'technicians' they're supposed to behave like musicians. De La suffer this plight as well; Aceyalone did too.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Collage of history to the now. This is kind of the beginning of rap celebrating itself and it's own history as a statement. By this point rap had existed for over a decade and so you have the old school/new school dynamic already giving way to whole other beasts. Paul was around for so much of that at such an early age, a child prodigy practically when it came to rap production who was around even early enough for the Spoonie Gees of the world so unlike the people he's often compared to like your Pete Rock/Premier/Showbiz & Diamond D types he'd been an enduring character in rap. In a sense that's why him and De La had their legendary chemistry, because he not only knew how to make good beats for the moment but he knew how to present them in a sense of their own history. The same way Mannie Fresh later remarked he produced the Hot Boyz like they were the Furious Five; it's understanding who you are in the moment, and whom you're aspiring to be.

Actual groove hits. There they go; Treacherous Three routines but with 'proper content'. Educative. Illustrative. Recitation, like a cipher by monks or acolytes. De La are immensely tedious to me because they lack the shamanism of the Jungle Brothers, the oratorical demands of a Chuck D or even the earnest egotism of a KRS-One. It's all internally relevant to the back and forth of the MCs but it's done before the audience not FOR the audience. You can easily imagine Trugroy and Posnudous doing this to one another with a back and forth 'pattycake' sequence being exchanged beneath their looking into one another. Reflexive. Later they'd insist they're showmen, and have charisma, and should be rewarded by people despite emerging from their internally locked state to declare how... they're the toughest, angriest nerds you'll ever see and how the people who had showmanship whom others naturally gravitated for are suckers and sellouts. Angry Long Island nerds, always on the outside by trade and by practice, always happy to be 'unique' but then scornful that nobody thought the "You laugh because you think I'm different, I laugh just because you're all the same :)" pose made them particularly inclusive.
 

forclosure

Well-known member
As much as i understand and respect that 3 Feet is the "important" De La album meaning its the one rock lads who dont listen to rap often will champion of raps "importance" truth be told i prefer the 2 albums that came out after this. Its good but yeah its like trying to find any reason to listen to Illmatic at this point for me.

I get what Crowl is saying bout the Treacherous Three style back and forth between Trugoy and Pos and truth be told i feel like on something like "Oodles of Os" they they were sharper and interlinked in that regard. As much as they were influenced by that intial wave of MCs they didnt exactly see themselves as party guys(if that makes sense)

The little collage at the beginning is nice its both part of the most foreward thinking aspect of the album and weirdly probably the most dated cause soon after this you couldnt make these kind of sample heavy albums anymore unless youre like god help you the Avalanches who miss the point and think the reasons something like 3 Feet was good is because it had 300 samples on it and not the fact that Prince Paul has been making beats since 86 so his approach to the craft and sense of humour was slightly more off kilter and attentive than any of them chucklefucks.
 

forclosure

Well-known member
Sorry man i tried

i do really like Posdonus as a rapper though one of those guys you kinda have to sit with a little before all his best qualities shine through

"Breakadawn" rules
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Literally all I could think of was trying to remember the Lonnie Liston Smith sample in "Dead Presidents" b/c the melody was so close and yet not. So all I got is that insatiable nag sensation like a giant fissure in my brain.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
Mvuent listen to this for us.

thanks man

I've never listened to them before but I read a Sean Booth interview where he intriguingly praises how they "imply" music, so that's my main reference point starting off.

right away I hear what he means. as expected, it's very desolate and metallic, evocative of a wasteland of abandoned industrial buildings, similar to the world in eraserhead. and very close up, so you're probably inside or right next to one of them. but the foreground sounds form an incidental-sounding melody that's oddly peaceful, a kind of lullaby.

still no changes on a macro level, so I'm forced to focus more on the main noise melody. I often think of distorted sounds as suggesting aggression or violence, but the interplaying voices (spirits?) here sound weary, as though they've been "singing" that same phrase for hundreds of years. maybe when they started the place you're in wasn't as lonely. not weak/faltering though, there's a lot of force and weight in the sounds.

not sure what to make of the last 30 seconds. the ringing background detail is now all you can hear. you must have moved away from the main sound sources without noticing, like you might in a dream.

but it's definitely a place, not so much a story unfolding in the present. nothing really happens but it would probably ruin the experience if something did. encourages "horizontal" listening where you notice different nuances in constant sounds that are only subtly changing, rather than anticipating new events. some the overtones are really nice in their own right.

what really impresses me is how this blurs the line between diegetic and and non diegetic sound. it's evocative in that you can imagine physical sources for the sounds and a world beyond them, but the sounds are also emotive/"musical" in a way that you wouldn't get from a field recording. as a result the whole thing feels haunted/magical, as though there's some otherworldly presence you can sense. abandoned pipes and furnaces speaking to you.

that's all I got for now. there are a few tracks that I'll be trying to get impressions of soon though. if anyone else liked this thread as much as I do lol
 
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