If You Do Spread Your Wings, Please Let Me Know -- Kno's Death Is Silent

Actually quite similar to how I run into a lot of metal these days, no longer hanging around any metal heads, I was unfamiliar with CunninLynguists in general and Kno in specific for certain. This happens a lot with rap, which seems to run in an even greater variety of strains and layers. There's obviously the readily available and apparent mainstream rap, there's heavily familiar underground rap, there's the more intricate varieties that focus on wordsmithing, there's the hybrid forms that meld with other genres, and the kind that has determined fans without any major hook from violating expectations. Heck, there's more beyond that. Still, it makes it increasingly difficult to get a handle on whether you might like an artist or not without simply listening. On the bright side, the nature of rap means hearing it live is one of the more accurately represented genres, so long as the place you hear it has reasonable sound and the DJ (or laptop) is solid, it bears a pretty strong resemblance to the recorded material.

When I saw this album, it screamed "independent rap," but that's a pretty wide swath of music to plow through, and there's no telling what it means. The one advantage metal does have is that, while the named genre or subgenre can be misleading, it does at least give a starting point. Subdivision of rap hasn't taken enough hold to become widespread. There are certainly vibes and feelings that I break apart in my head for my own moods, or to attempt to share a genre that receives a lot of hatred or at least dislike in the kind of circles I most often find myself in.

I mistakenly first believed this was a CunninLynguists album, as it is marked as "CunninLynguists Presents," but it is in fact the first solo album from producer/emcee Kno, who is from that duo or trio (depending on when you are discussing). I'd heard the name, outside of the obvious pun that inspired it, and was pretty sure I'd heard it associated with talent, which is what drove the (rather cheap) purchase of what I discovered was an out-of-print album.

Kno's beats are loop-oriented and relatively lo-fi, spare and heavy on vocal sampling. The title of the entry actually refers to the song "Spread Your Wings," which also features fellow CunninLynguist Deacon the Villain:

The abstract notion I have of the subdivision this falls into is somewhat confused. The beats are reminiscent of both the underground varieties of "mainstream" rap (as opposed to the more introspective varieties), and indeed the lyrical material makes reference to sex (particularly in "La Petit Mort," the French term for orgasm, I've heard--making it a clever insertion on an album that is intended to deal in the matters of death) and drugs more explicitly and at greater length than in most of the rap I do listen to regularly.

At the same time, the lyrics are also in that same vein, in that the words are impressive more in terms of rhyme scheme and witty wordplay than in terms of their perceptiveness. It seems, by and large, to be in that vein of rap that's not been moved into territory that makes it comfortable for those who "don't like rap," and is simply underground because it is not of the modern production techniques.

Kno's voice, to be honest, is a bit awkward and is regularly outdone by his guests, be they his regular group members (the aforementioned Deacon the Villain as wellas Natti) or others who appear. His words are often clever, though sometimes a bit forced, and his articulation is somewhat peculiar and uncomfortable, as if he hears his voice in a different way than it comes out. He has great control and the flow isn't off, but the emphases and the enunciation make things a bit weird--think of someone forcing a dialect unnatural to them and you may have an idea of what I mean.

The production, however, which is what Kno seems to be best known for, is excellent. And, as a bonus, the album proper is followed by instrumental versions of most of the tracks unlisted on the CD version of the album.

I do recommend giving it a listen, whatever reservations I might have, for the production to be sure, but also for those who may feel differently about Kno's voice.

You can check it out (and purchase it directly from the group) over at bandcamp.

I'm Trying to Free Up Them Wings, Trying to Bear Some Teeth -- Doomtree

In case you ignore the titles, I normally leave their origins something you have to look up. However, this time, the lyrics are from a set of those I'm often found quoting, even if just in silly places like Facebook statuses, and I'm going to repeat them:

I'm trying to free up them wings
Trying to bear some teeth
Insignificance ain't no signature I'm trying to leave

Part of the reason for emphasizing them is that they appealed to me on a visceral, happy level--they reference "wings and teeth," the logo seen above for this group of people from the Minneapolis, Minnesota. They're found in the collaborative work "Traveling Dunk Tank," from the False Hopes collected album released in 2007. It's the 12th False Hopes, actually, the name of a series of releases they began when they started, functioning as internal or demo releases, interspersed between "full" or "official" releases. That said, I listened to "Knives on Fire," the second track from False Hopes [XII] (as it's labeled in my digital collection) over and over and over and over and over before the album was released for those of us who ordered it.

Doomtree and I are oddly entwined, albeit from a distance in many senses.

When It Comes to Making Dreams, It's All Mixed Up

Sometimes I don't know where to start. There are decades of music, and plenty of it I've never heard, and plenty of it you've never heard, dear readers. Do I come in an emphasize a long-time love of my own? Do I try to bring one out that I feel people will not know? Do I try to pull a band out from the sturdy position of independent fame and influence, showing it to people who never heard of it? Address resources for music? Point to only the things I'm looking at in the immediate?

Any of these is an intriguing idea, and, unfocused though it may leave me, I want to address all of them, and leave this a discussion of music from an unusual viewpoint--not restrict that viewpoint to only certain elements or factors of the entirety of music.

I'd like to write about a band I love dearly and have spent horrifying amounts of money on, to say nothing of what a few family members have spent on them as gifts, but to cover エレファントカシマシ¹ known in English by the half-translation, half-transliteration "The Elephant Kashimashi," but that's a massive undertaking. They released a new single in November (yes, they still do that in Japan!), and another is coming in April. The album they are likely to appear on has not been announced yet, though. This seems like a solid place to bring them up, but it's effectively guaranteed that I'd have to address something like the totality of that band--which has existed, unchanged, for the last 24 years, with an album release almost every single year in that time, to say nothing of non-album singles, non-album b-sides, and EPs like Dead or Alive (no relation to the British band, video game or movies). This isn't the time for that, as that will probably take a few entries, perhaps to discuss them by "era."

Similarly, while I've recently acquired the reissues of The Fall's Cerebral Caustic and Shift-Work, that's another band that would need a lot of time devoted to try to make an accessible discussion work. That's 29 studio albums, a number more lives ones, endless compilations, EPs, non-album singles and more music in general than one can shake a stick at, no matter how vigorously.