Album Of The Week: April 14th-20th, 2014

My Album Of The Week for the week of April 14th-20th, 2014:

Edison - No Three Men Make A Tiger

01. Init.
02. If You're Going To Say Nothing, Say Yo A Few Times First
03. A Fortune Gone To Hashed Kids
04. I Don't Know Tim, I'm Not The Loudest Guy At The Fuck You Contest
05. Reporting Live From The Wellspring Of Opinions And Lost Buttons
06. The True Story Of Baron Vonfeedreader (w/Shannon Harney)
07. Think Occasionally Of The Uploading, Of Which You Spare Yourself The Sight
08. All The Starving Artists, Eating Their Own Hands
09. Waiting In Line To Meet Steve At The Crossroads, At Midnight
10. Make Noise Not Marketing
11. Pander Junkies
12. Don't Tell Us What We're Doing, We Don't Want To Know
13. The Disgusted Briefcase (w/Babel Fishh)
14. Alexander The Great Genre Switching Soulsuck
15. Eye Teeth And Egos

If you've been following the blog for a while you should already be pretty familiar with Edison.  I've written about him several times here and played him several times on the Flatbasset Radio podcast.  I wrote about his last album, No Sun No Food, last July when it was also an Album Of The Week.  The album was so great that it eventually took the crows as my most played album of 2013.

If you haven't been following along, here's the bullet points.  Edison is a beatmaker out of the Bay Area.  Up until No Sun No Food he was known for making beats that were dense, manic, and yet still melodic.  He switched up the game last year on No Sun No Food, making an exquisitely laid back album that was still clearly the work of the same artists.

So here we have No Three Men Make A Tiger.  I've only listened to it a couple of times, but I think it's safe to say that this is a middle ground between his manic earlier work and his new found sense of pacing.  It's a much harder, busier album than No Sun No Food, yet it no longer feels quite as busy.  Where his early albums felt like you were riding around in a taxi who's driver was mixing adderall & vodka, No Three Men Make A Tiger is a great strolling record.  No Sun No Food was a great strolling album as well, but that album felt like a summer stroll through the park.  No Three Men... has a darker edge to it.  Like strolling through that same park at 3 AM as a storm's blowing in to town.  Obviously I highly recommend it.

If you'd like to check it out it's available as a "Name Your Price" download on Edison's Bandcamp page.  Seriously, pick it up. Pick up No Sun No Food while you're at it.  And then, once you've grabbed those, follow this link to 900 Bats and pick up the Free Willy beat tape.  Then you'll be set for summer.

Album Of The Week: July 15-July 21, 2003

My Album Of The Week for the week of July 15^th-July 21^st, 2013:

Edison – No Sun No Food

For those of you unfamiliar with Edison, he's a producer out of San Francisco. His previous records were filled with busy, percussion heavy beats that seemed to thrive on a this-could-go-off-the-rails-at-any-point energy.

I first found out about Edison via Aesop Rock's blog 900 Bats. Edison posted a handful of roughly half-hour-long beat tapes to the blog and gave them away for free (his Free Willy tape is a stone cold classic in my book). Those tapes tended to swing between very energetic, hook heavy moments and slow-burn sections seamlessly. They're the kind of tapes that are perfect for walking around while the snow falls.

Anyway, hopefully most people here in the Twin Cities know Edison from the split EP he did with Lazerbeak titled Kill Switch. In fact, give this video for “A Cure For A Case Of The Wealthies” for a good example of what Edison sounds like:

Now, the reason I'm excited to spend a week with No Sun No Food is that on this album Edison completely stayed away from the faster, busier moments and focused solely on the slower & moodier side of his sound. I hate to use the term “downbeat” to describe No Sun No Food, because it's not a depressing record by any stretch. If anything, it's just a more relaxed, content version of Edison's sound. It's a laid-back, summertime album.

There aren't a lot of artists that can change up their sound and end up with an album that stands up on its own. Some of my favorite (and therefore best) artists have tried and failed, ending up with albums that stand up only from a, “Huh, isn't this curious?” perspective. No Sun No Food has a lot more going for it than that “Huh?” response.

Anyway, Edison posted it on his Bandcamp page as a Pay-What-You-Want and I strongly suggest that you head over and grab a copy. Perfect “Summer Of 2013” type of record.