Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts

Friday, December 20, 2013

The Life and Times of Time

Remember Time? He's an MC from Denver... I reviewed his last album four years ago. Well, he's back with his next and third CD, Newstalgia on Dirty Laboratory Records. No autotune this time. But there's actually a lot to discuss on this one, so let's get stuck in.

Newstalgia is an autobiographical album. I mean, super autobiographical; it probably should've been titled Timestalgia. Each song is about his childhood, his family, etc. Consequently, how compelling you find the lyrics will depend a lot on how invested you are in Time's personal life. If you're a serious fan or know him personally, this digs deep enough to be some pretty riveting stuff, But as a casual listener, it started to wear thin pretty early and overall it felt too on the nose.

Like, take this quick bar: "The only things we know is drinkin' and fightin' and heartbreak. I was the one who started the brawl at Finnegan's Wake. I'm half English and half Irish; that's my first crime. It's also the reason I hate myself half the time." If you're feeling it... if you're like oh, it's so sincere and emotional, and yet the James Joyce reference shows it's intellectual at the same time.* Than this is the album for you. I'm going to keep discussing the pros and cons of this album; but you're probably going to decide in favor of this album on every issue I raise and I definitely recommend you take the time to track it down. But, if you're thinking more along the lines of cloying, pretentious, angsty, or you've just got the word "hipster" flashing across your brain in big, red letters, then you can stop reading here. Every moment and element of this album is going to rub you the wrong way, and you should stay well clear.

Not that every song is reaching for the artsy and profound. "8 Bit Memories" is a song about his childhood video games, "a joystick was the only thing I enjoyed holdin', because it let me save the world and keep my axe golden. I tried playin' Punch Out, 'till I found out you hit the band aid..." I mean, yeah, it's about a little bit more than just that... i.e. a child's limited outlook on the world. But at the end of the day, it's really just an excuse to play Catch All the References with the gamers in the audience, you know like "Pink Cookies In a Plastic Bag" or "Labels" meets Hot Karl's "Kerk Gybson." It's an intentionally - and not unwelcome - lighter moment.

He also opens it up a bit by bringing in a lot of collaborators. Almost every song features somebody even if a lot of 'em are just on the choruses, but almost all of them virtual unknowns. I did recognize a couple names, though, including producer Factor who has a track on here, Xiu Xiu who I just know from having done a song or two with Sole and Fake Four owner Ceschi, who's unfortunately now more famous for something completely unrelated to his music.

And the production has a very lush feel, featuring a lot of presumably live instrumentation (this might also account for some of the unknown collaborators). The self-produced "They Call Us the Irish," for example, has really heavy piano and horn running through it, that gives it almost a jazz fusion feel. This offers a really nice, warm energy that'll keep you listening to the entire record whether you're particularly feeling Time on the mic or not. It's clear that a lot of care went into this album, which you can't help but appreciate. On the other hand, there's no "this is my jam!" beat to really grab you like a lot of our simpler, sampled classics. There's no big single here, just a long, full album. Whether that's a plus or minus will just depend on your current relationship with music.

Look, I could nitpick this album all day. The hook on "Writer's Shot"... the preachy spoken word skit that I think is meant to be a homage to Common Sense's "Pop's Rap"... the lazy list style song ("Shout for the Voiceless") that Buck 65 likes to stick on each of his albums, where you just read off a list of things with a common theme for three and a half minutes and pretend you've written a song... The title. And they are genuinely irksome - I would like this album twice as much if he could just wire-brush all those little bits away. He's like a good author who just needs an editor.

But after a little while, getting mired in the faults is missing the point. This album is a pleasure to listen to if you're a fan of this kind of indie, semi-avant garde hip-hop, and it shows real talent. Newstalgia is eighteen full-length songs, so each flaw is like a little buoy floating in an ocean of quality stuff. Or at least a lake. Is it the kind of album I'll revisit time and again for years? No, but I think this one shows Time has the potential to make that album down the road. And that's a lot more than you can say about most of these guys out there doing it.


*And he is making a genuine point with it... I've written about references for references' sake. But Time is actually saying something besides just pointing out that he knows Joyce exists.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

It's Naked Time!

Remember in my Sole interview when I asked him who Time was? He's like I have no idea, and I'm like, "well, your on his new album." He remembered and said, "ahhh thats my homey time. he's from denver. he's become a good friend of mine. sometimes when i think someone shows a lot of promise i do music with them." Well, Time was good enough to send me his album (plus a bio), so we can delve into the matter a bit further.

Time's a solo MC (yes, from Denver), though he's also part of a 2-man crew called Calm, with producer AwareNess, who also did more than half of his latest album (which makes the distinction between a Calm album and a Time album pretty thin). It's called Naked Dinner, and it's his third, not counting the Calm album and an EP he mentions in his bio. It's on Dirty Laboratory Records.

Now, I've never read any William Burroughs, but just seeing Cronenberg's movie was enough for me to get that this album is full of Burroughs references, and the album has more than just a punny title in common with Naked Lunch, from a hook about botching a William Tell-style shooting to the bugs and typewriter in the artwork. I'm not really sure why it's full of Burroughs, though... I guess it just serves as atmosphere?

Anyway, it's a pretty solid album. Time sounds like a cross between early Eyedea and Braille when they're in full concept song mode. Their website (I'll drop the link at the end) says AwareNess's beats sound like early RZA, Pete Rock & Large Pro, "but he manages to transcend all of them." I give him credit for having the nerve to write that and make it public, but it's not true... he doesn't sound like any of them at all. His production is good, though, don't get me wrong; but it's of the 'mood above funkiness' variety. It's like haunting synths and strained samples - not the kind of you're gonna want to bump in your jeep like those other producers' work, but fitting for songs called "Cockroach Goddess."

Content-wise, the album's actually got a lot of variety. He goes from rapper biography to a song about vampires to one about never growing up. Guests include Sole (as previously established), C-Rayz Walz, who sounds surprisingly like Bizarre on this record, and some guy named Damon JeVon who's on five or six tracks. Time breaks out the autotune on two or three tracks, which is interesting to hear on a decidedly underground-sounding album. The quality of the lyrics is as varied as the subject matter. He certainly gets points for scope and he comes up with some genuinely effective lines and moments... Other lines just come off as kinda silly and confusing, with cloying attempts to be clever like:

"Charlton Heston told me that
Soylent Green is people,
With pink stars, yellow moons,
And babies and steeples.
The clouds rain panic,
And I rain on command
With teardrops, snow flakes,
Mobs and man.
She wears a bullet-proof heart;
He wears a Dick Dastardly smile,
With carnations in his teeth
And a spastic style.
She can't believe it's love;
He can't believe it's not butter.
She shows her breasts like car wrecks
Making his privates flutter."

I mean, I think that verse is supposed to be a sillier moment on the album (I hope), so maybe it was an unfair verse to pick out of context... and his songs with a stricter focus are do tend to flow more smoothly. But you see what I mean: he sounds a bit young (I mean his writing, not his actual voice). Once he gets past that, he could really be an MC to watch out for; but even as it stands now, Naked Dinner is a decent quality album if you fall into his niche style audience. You'll know if you perked up or groaned when I mentioned "early Eyedea" and "concept song" in the same sentence.

Time has a myspace here, and also a pretty nice official site for him and his label at dirtylaboratory.com. And Naked Dinner is available at ughh, itunes, and probably where ever else you frequent online.


P.s. - I apologize for the title of this post... couldn't help myself.