It isn’t easy to live up to a comparison to sampling legend DJ Shadow but so far Mr. Herbert Quain’s How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving the Waiting EP, which was described as “taking the same path already experienced by the likes of DJ Shadow or Nicolas Jaar” doesn’t disappoint. Instead of capturing the beauty of a city at midnight or using empty space and weird noise to take us far, far away, Mr. Herbert Quain employs aged sounds and samples to take his songs somewhere older and warmly sentimental. Samples of what could be Scientology manuals or novels and poems pop up in a unique blend of the bizarre and familiar. How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving the Waiting is a consistently exciting and surprising listen and works well as a cohesive package. Stream my favorite track from the release below and listen to the rest after the jump.
-PK
Unheralded modern philosopher and scholar Danny Devito isn’t your typical topic for a hip-hop track but thankfully Oab Jenkins and Eu-IV have teamed up to give the voice of our generation some proper appreciation. ’Danny Devito’ has Oab Jenkins romanticizing with girls and pulling out some well-spoken life advice over an jittering upbeat instrumental from Eu-IV. Throughout the track snippets from some of Devito’s more famous speeches and musings pop up which gives Oab Jenkins a platform to jump off from with his verses. Oab Jenkins isn’t trying to change the rap game with ‘Danny Devito’ but he manages to demonstrate that he’s not a rapper to sleep on either.
Girls’ frontman Christopher Owens may have left the group (basically guaranteeing that we won’t be getting more Girls’ albums), however, that doesn’t mean that we won’t be hearing anymore of Owen’s perfectly sad and sappy music. No one is better than Owens at making depressing and cliche sound so beautiful and ‘Lysandre’s Theme’ and ‘Here We Go’ demonstrate that Owens doesn’t plan on letting that change for his upcoming solo debut. Throughout the two tracks Owens sings about breaking hearts over a shuffling instrumental line-up of flutes, melodicas and both acoustic and fuzz-tone guitars. It may still be unclear why Owens decided to leave the group but as long as he keeps making music like this there isn’t much to whine about.