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dublab presents
IN THE LOOP: 5
Available Now! (08.25.09)

dublab’s In the Loop vinyl series continues with a new home on Anticon and fresh sounds from the most vivid music-makers around. Like the previous four installments this fifth chapter rightly represents a wave of pure creativity: diverse gems from a shining circle of highly-inspired minds. Put it on and set your mind to spinning sublime. Features Lucky Dragons, Teengirl Fantasy, White Rainbow, and more.

Serengeti and Polyphonic’s Terradactyl is an album about place—losing place, mostly, struggling to find it again, and succumbing to the fact that it’s cold, and surprisingly lonely, when you’re dressed in the human condition. Serengeti, heretofore a master of on-record character acting, appears here as his most vulnerable self. His cracked abstractions paint him as homeless, at times literally, while weaving their meaning into the much larger loom of universal displacement. And as on this duo’s 2007 debut, Don’t Give Up, worldly beat-maestro Polyphonic is on hand to make beauty out of so much madness.

The debut release from collaborators Buck 65 and Greetings From Tuskan - an impressive debut of smart pop, roiling downtempo and introspective rap that finds its two architects embracing the romance inherent in their unique circumstances: Separated by an ocean and having never met in person, the duo share a startlingly powerful connection that unfolds through their music.

One part aggressive rap mixtape, one part posse reunion record that wrangles all seven original members of the Anticon collective—and several distinguished guests including Buck 65, Aesop Rock, Bus Driver, Fog's DJ Andrew, D-Styles and more—to reaffirm the crew’s uncontestable place in hip-hop history. Herein, you’ll find the finest prose from today’s most venerable wordsmiths, slung over a perpetually shifting landscape of hard beats and texture. Guess who's back.

Created for the Element Skateboards film, This Is My Element, the T.I.M.E. Soundtrack is the first of its kind: an original, artist-composed score crafted to the beat of polyurethane pounding pavement. Thump-driven destruction and fiery sound collage from veteran producer Odd Nosdam, this album is concocted from the finest of ingredients: boom-bap, warped dub, lo-bit folk, record static and dusty samples. It's big, it's grimy, it's melodic, and it stomps like Godzilla.

Number four in a five-volume series of remix EPs for Genghis Tron’s kaleidoscopic metal feast Board Up The House Features not only the first Anticon label contribution from long time affiliates Subtle, but also entries from Odd Nosdam, Telefon Tel Aviv, and Lucky Dragons. Packaged in a jacket featuring “remixed” album art by Board Up The House LP cover artist Jon Beasley (OSK Design), this pressing comes exclusively in a limited edition of 1,000 on distinctly colored vinyl.

Anathallo's sophomore release and Anticon debut, Canopy Glow presents the Chicago seven-piece as a band that has as much energy and inspiration as it does ownership of its sound. It is an album both calm and considered, playful and profound, wide-eyed in approach and colored by kaleidoscopic detail.

The first solo album from Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow. Here Tobacco explores a darker, starker and altogether more badass dimension of his complex vision. Using analog synths and tape machines, Tobacco defies all expectations, rocks the boombox, and casts a menacing, irresistible spell. Features help from Aesop Rock.

At long last, the RBs drop their official Anticon debut like a sack of analog televisions onto the fractured landscape of modern urban forms. TV Loves You Back is a dark and dense, art-twisted, New Wave-inflected hip-pop marvel born of our overstimulated era. Musically, it stands alone. Strains of ghettotech, crunk, and hyphy twirp and twirl with Eno-like atmospherics and buoyant bass swells, while rapper/songbird Passage warps his vocals over blistering synth. Likewise, the lyrics gallop at a ferocious clip. Like electron shots from a cathode ray tube, they combine to form a deliciously sardonic image of modern living, and break down into constituents that are metaphysically hopeful, socially relevant, poetic, and playful.

Alias’ first solo instrumental album in five years, one which finds the accomplished electro/acoustic musician and beat-smith returning to a proven foundation, while building all else anew. Alias’ most melodic work yet, Resurgam is also an album of heavy, intricate rhythms. Features collaborative tracks with Yoni Wolf of WHY? and The One AM Radio.

Anticon is proud to be presenting the 2xLP version of Astrological Straits, the solo debut from Zach Hill, drummer for Northern California noise-rock outfit Hella. Long considered one of the most innovative drummers of modern music, Zach spent the majority of the last year working on the new album as well as recording and touring with Marnie Stern.

For Hill’s own solo release he enlisted a number of former recording partners and included a number of new ones. Guests contributing to Astrological Straits include Les Claypool, Chino Moreno, No Age’s Randy Randall and Dean Spunt, !!!/LCD Soundsystem’s Tyler Pope, Marco Benevento, Prints’ Zac Nelson, Marnie Stern, The Flying Luttenbacher’s Jonathon Hicshke, Satori/RX Bandit’s Steve Borth, The Advantage’s Robbie Moncrief, Them Hills’ Dan Elkan and Hella bandmates Carson McWhirter and Josh Hill.

On his second album for Anticon, Bristolian rock collagist SJ Esau, or Sam Wisternoff, tightens his playful, genre-bounding compositions even as he brings in a cast of collaborators to amplify his singular vision. While 2007’s Wrong Faced Cat Feed Collapse smartly played to its own contrasts, Small Vessel melds its diverse moods and styles into a buoyant, bold and cohesive whole, making for an album both utterly post-modern and curiously epic despite its humble means.

A two disc collection of remixes, b-sides, and more - (CD version enhanced with videos). Featuring Boards Of Canada, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Serena Maneesh, Bracken, Jessica Bailiff, and many more. Read what Pitchfork Media says here.

Dosh's 4th full-length, the perfect amalgam of the explorative wonderment of his self-titled debut and the seasoned virtuosity found in 2006's much accliamed The Lost Take. Features help from Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Andrew Bird, Fog, Odd Nosdam and more.

Two years after wooing critics with the beloved Elephant Eyelash, WHY? return, third LP in hand. In short, Alopecia is a collection of hard rhymes and raw-spun songs forced through the stubborn smile of a life-lover scorned and reborn. In long, this is an album of bone-dry jokes, suicides played out in poem, musings on final moments written inside of restrooms, begrudging self-affirmation, and the grit and glories of every day living. Yoni Wolf has returned with the Art of Songcraft tucked under his arm. Inspired as much by MF Doom and Lil’ Wayne as J. Newsom and Big Dylan, his words roll out bent and beautiful, not unlike the musical architecture that sends those words skyward.

The debut record from new anticon signee Son Lux, a collection of songs sharing the same air and space; painted from the same palette but set apart still - each is a distinct region of one broad sonic landscape, characterized by the austere grandness of chamber music, undulating electronica, the intricately orchestral assembled via hip-hop collage, a day-plain pop ease silhouetted by deep soul.