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Last summer, Kanye West was heralded as a visionary for dusting off Daft Punk's six-year-old Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger and throwing his own vocals over it for Graduation's Stronger. It was a nice enough track - at least for the first couple of weeks before Clear Channel and MTV managed to cram it into every available hour of airtime - but it wasn't all that groundbreaking, as emcees had been jumping on electronic club beats since the 80's, going back to the days of Mantronix (and a few years later, more famously with the Jungle Brothers' I'll House You). Yet it was an interesting development musically, as I had been expecting more hip hop artists to experiment with the type of beats that dominated the clubs and raves of the mid-to-late 90's, anticipating an eventual successor to groups like Twin Hype. A few rappers, like Ja Rule and Eminem, dabbled in Ecstasy and some of the other more sundry aspects of the scene, but the music behind techno was itself left untouched by hip hop, leaving a rather large source of music untapped until Kanye (and on a smaller scale, artists like Mickey Factz) finally picked up on it.
Despite it's use of Daft Punk, however, Kanye's Stronger never strayed far from it's hip hop roots, never fully embracing the origins of its electronic sample. Now months later, Bless 1 - like Kanye West, a producer/emcee from Chicago - has taken the Louis Vuitton Don's lead and gone several steps further down the path to a true mix of hip hop and electronica, lending his vocal talents to Micronaut's new album Callisto.
Founded by Chris Randall, Micronaut is an instrumental project that traces its roots to the Windy City's electronic music scene. For those of you who have been following Bless' career up to this point, I think you'll be very surprised by how good he sounds backed by this type of production. If any of you doubted his versatility as an emcee, his ability to fit right in on a pair of electronica beats should put an end to that. He's had to adjust his delivery, but his lyricism remains intact on the two songs from the album, Full Speed and Rapid I Movement. Here's the first track:
Bless 1 and Micronaut - Full Speed (Album version)
Callisto was originally recorded last year, but the entire album was lost after Chris' hard drive crashed (a note to all aspiring producers: back up your work!). All of the tracks had to be recreated, including the above Full Speed. As a bonus, here's the original version that Bless sent to me back in November:
Bless 1 and Micronaut - Full Speed (Original mix)
The rest of the album falls squarely into the electronica category of music, which may not appeal to the die-hard hip hop heads in the audience. I will say that, while I'm far from an authority on this genre - most of my exposure to it comes secondhand from my brother's addiction to Carl Cox - I am familiar enough with it to appreciate the fact that Callisto is very well done. If you're at all into club music, or perhaps looking to expand your musical horizons, you would do well to give this album some time in your stereo. You can buy Callisto over at positron records. The online store is set up like iTunes (each song is 99 cents), so the less adventurous among you can pick up Bless' two songs before committing to the purchase of an entire album.
For updates, visit Micronaut's myspace page and Bless 1's page.
3/03/2007 09:00:01 PM posted by Fresh