Sometimes, when I’m really fiending for a fresh taste, the music I seek has to defy all the disappointment of curated hyperbole, cutting through the context of names, track-listings, producer credits, everything. Music that I can just unwrap as is without the pretext. I gaze, and scroll and click and click and stream, and play, and abruptly pause, and jump to a new page. I’m desperate for something with a low end that knocks, warm chords that glide but most importantly that face scrunching feeling you get when you find something truly undeniable. For these times, a brother goes to Soundcloud.
The beauty of Soundcloud (besides its mastering of the embeddable player) is clearly its sprawling community of independent artists. There is a world of styles and compositions that to me serve as the origin of a lot of the experimentation you hear on more popular circuits. It’s an insular world that flows and ebbs in wonderful ways, filled with bedroom producers, rappers, and songwriters that at least some percent of a percent of will at least be blog-roll mainstays soon. This week’s pony is where my money is on — enter Montrealien Nick Wisdom.
The thing that always grabs me about dude’s instrumentals is how on-fucking-point the grooves are for where the current state of the “beat scene” lies (that experimental hip hop/electro-soul sound that all the kiddies are steady swallowin’). The scene has more than its fair share of copycatting, and just overall staleness, but its producers like Wisdom that upon hearing make you realize they “get it”. When his beats are heard, they tend to take one sliding fast through tubes to the the year 3059, all while desperately grasping a beat up copy of Stevie Wonder’s “Visions”.
This week, Wisdom releases his newest LP, “Missus Peel”, on Vancouver (Wisdom’s hometown) label Jellyfish Recordings, a conglomerate chock full of equally impressive projects that sound a similar vein. Suffice it to say that when dude sent me the title track, I was sprung. The LP is simply a clinic in Dilla-esque syncopation, and groove, with well timed (and executed) guest verses that make this Wisdom’s most all around project to date
The aforementioned “Missus Peel”, featuring fellow MTL beatmaker Pomo, trudges along just right layering fuzzy, whiny synthesizers exactly where you’d want them. Moka Only (formerly of Canadian underground legends Swollen Members) is a mainstay on other Jellyfish albums and assists on two tracks. The way in which he bodies “Beach Day”, an anthem for summers in the BC, has me thinking he’d be wise to enlist Wisdom for a whole project.
The beats continue to surprise as we move through this short but sweet outing, whether it be the slick guitar licks samples that morph into the sexiest of synths on “Demons”, or the moment where I lose my shit as “Anything 4 U” goes from a slow & fuzzy knocker, into a killer Bossa Nova groove that will make your heart leap.
The album ends with a surreal remix of Outkast’s “Ms. Jackson” by Potatohead People a collaboration between Nick and fellow Vancouverite/Jellyfish artist Astrological (responsible for one my favorite EP’s of the year), and adds Kendrick’s 1st verse from 2012’s “Sing About Me” to the mix. This track serves as the album’s perfect conclusion, as if we might peer into Wisdom’s mind and find where his two eye’s focus lies; one in the past, and one in the future. Thus it’s no surprise that the Kendrick verse slides in so seamlessly here, even following two of history’s greatest rappers on one of their most well known tracks, because of this ongoing past & future harmony.
Let us hope for the sake of our ears that what comes next for Nick punches past the apocalypse, and still manages to hold it down with the funk of old.
“Missus Peel” is available now for download on JellyFish’s Bandcamp.
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Post by Daniel Benny /@delajoo
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