Depth Charged
"But Still Nothing" by Echo Depth Finders
I love it when music like this, what is essentially well programmed instrumental hip-hop, comes along from a place besides the usual roundup of New York, LA, London, or even Columbus, Ohio. Rather, Echo Depth Finders, made up of beat programmer Digital One (Nikolay Zhmakin) and Wrong MC (Anton Belov), are from Novosibirsk, Russia. (Strangely enough, Novosibirsk is the Russian sister-city of St. Paul Minnesota - you learn something new every day, don't you?)
Echo Depth Finders' new album, called City Of Dolls - likely a nod to their home-town, that, when googled, returns a massive amount of mail-order bride websites (seriously) - is full of sparse but hipnotic beats, like minimal techno broken out of 4/4. About half of the tracks on the album have Wrong's stream-of-conciousness raps strewn across them. His rap topics often tread the waters of technophobia and post-apocalyptic imagery, the thoughtlessness of modern society, and already close to artificial humans turning into robots or puppets.
I chose to forgo the lyric-bound tracks, just because the production is the thing that stands out to me the most - the tracks all have this busted, dubbed out vibe that I definitely dig on (sometimes the production smacks of mid-period DJ Cam, the more I think about it), and this instrumental track is dope enough to stand on its own. Not to knock Wrong MC, but I'm just more of a beat-head than a freestyle-lyrical vibe guy. Considering the total outsider vibe these guys are rocking - I mean, Novosibirsk is the largest city in Siberia for god's sake, not a place you traditionally associate with hip-hop - their thing works, it really does. Its definitely abstract as hell, but I really like it. A couple of the other amazing tracks are "The Wave," "Stepinto (No Pows)" and the album-closer "Spread This Mood" - crazy programming on both, and tight lyrical work to boot.
The album is out now on Germany's Meteosound and is available in the US at Forced Exposure - give it a listen, and swing by the label's site to check out more of their artists. For the übernerds out there, here's a fun trivia fact: the album was mastered by ~scape label-head Stefan Betke, aka Pole, the master of the latest wave of minimalist dub-inspired music.
Word to that.