"Transitions" - Loupo

Fresh produce from the Green Mountains, courtesy of Los Angeles purveyors of fine instrumentals, Cold Busted Records. Loupo is young, hungry and dope. This album is tight, fast and impressive. That should just about cover it, yeah? Enjoy.



The styles on display here are remarkably mature for a young buck -- filthy and melancholy, which a heavy emphasis on percussive textures and jazzy layering. As long as this cat stays busy he's going to shape up into a serious threat...

Aretha: The Beat Tape

Project management is a huge, vast, tremendous pain in the ass. Even assembling a modestly mediocre piece of work is still a piece of work, especially when you're coordinating a collaboration involving more than ten people. So doing all that and doing it well is a rare feat. Kinda like this beat tape here.

Only a few of the names here are new to the jaded, unspeakably sophisticated team here at Real Yeti Rap, but I've gotta say: I never would have thought to assemble this roster, especially for this particular project. It takes rare vision to see something like this before it even existed. Aretha: The Beat Tape is a diverse portfolio of approaches to the artform, and all of them work cohesively.



TL;DR - Fuck, this was good..

"Saturday Night" - Tut-Piece

It's always a welcome break for us when someone submits music that does not suck. Tut-Piece is a young producer from an obscure backwater called "New York City," and this is an instrumental album. This cat has a conceptual vision and it mostly works: a radio broadcast from an alternate universe where the 80's never ended. It was a hella decent soundtrack for a bunch of cleaning and organizing work earlier today. Everything fits, everything works.

The composition here is straight beats, so it does become obvious at many points you're essentially listening to instrumentals that haven't been sold to rappers yet. The structures never deviate much from basic demo packaging, but fuck it; it knocks, too.

If the concept of wall-to-wall synth grooves and gratuitous saxophone samples doesn't turn you off, this is a fucking enjoyable ride. We also salute the no-nonsense album copy -- which is necessary, since rappers are dumb herd animals:

"Terms and conditions of use: Purchasing any digital downloads from Ivy-League Zombie Productions does not give you license or ownership of any intellectual property rights of the content you access. You may not use content by Ivy-League Zombie Productions without permission from its owner."

Fuck yes. Teach 'em.

"Spontaneous Grooves: Episode 20" - Central Parks & Es-K

This is a pretty huge slice of MPC artistry right here. Everything thumps and this is an album with huge horizons; there's clearly some fertile soil chemistry going on between the two producer-scientists.



This minor masterpiece got hashed out in late night sessions at NEKtones Studio in Burlington, VT with the NEK legend Walter Westinghouse presiding.

"Majestic Dimensions: Vol III" - Man Mantis

Man Mantis never stops moving. From soundtracking art exhibits to crowd-sourcing noises for beautiful experiments to force-feeding rap music LSD with Nocando, his emerging aesthetic in the past few years is distinctly dissimilar. After perfecting a recipe on Cities Without Houses, the man opted to burn it all down and walk away, which is admirable in any line of work.

"Pale White Cutie Pie" - DJ Multiple Sex Partners

Since Sweaty Summer, the Ol' Dirty Russian has been seldom seen. That's probably a good thing in any language. Every year, though, World Around drops a new label compilation -- to the limited and laughable extent that what they do can be considered a "label" at all -- and Ivan Vilavonavich takes a break from his rollercoaster Hollywood life to dust off the MPC 1000 and get to work. The latest sculpture is this "Pale White Cutie Pie" jamalam, presumably inspired by, or dedicated to, Charlotte Stokely.

Word to Vault 46.

Thelonious Martin - "The 10 Minute Tape"

Beautiful slice of art. This Chicago producer is one of the most impressive this bitter cynic has heard in quite awhile. His consistency and range indicate a musical mind with a bright future, but more importantly, holy fuck this knocks. Turn it up.

Oneiric Field Mandala - Dr. Quandary

Raw, dark, psychedelic boom bap that draws from African deserts and Indian cities in equal measure. I fucking loved this track.



Dr. Quandary is, of course, a founder of World Around Records and an instrumental artist with serious bona fides for 2012. If you're digging this, his debut album is highly recommended: Beyond All Spheres of Force and Matter.