612 to 651

Sleep Tapes is the debut album from my homie (and former student) Spencer Wirth-Davis, aka Big Cats. It’s a mostly instrumental beat album that takes, as its title suggests, the imaginary landscapes of our own sleepy unconscious. Created over the last year or so, much of the album was made when other people themselves were sleeping. “I was making most of the material in my bedroom late at night, really quietly,” he told me, “so my neighbors wouldn’t kill me.”

Cats’ album does a great job of reflecting the mystery of the world when we fall asleep, like on the song “Hi Speed Dub,” as its fuzzed out spinet, ghostly voices, and other things that might go bump in the night are skewed just enough to place them out of everyday reality. Throughout the album, numerous little riffs and bits emerge and recede through the hazy textures, like on “Wonder Naps” and “2 Mics.” The highlight of the album is “Ballad Northwestern,” with its impossible-to-resist wordless vocals, slightly-distressed synths and addictive, yet not overpowering beat. Near the end, with the appropriately titled “New Day” and “Big World,” we start to hear the dawn, and the start of things anew.

The sounds of Sleep Tapes might remind some of old RJD2 or local sonic wizard Dosh. At points, though, the album starts to get repetitive, with similar grooves coming one after the other, while other times, Cats tries to fit in too many elements of his greatly varied sonic palette into a single song. Yet the album is full of head-nodding grooves, maybe even some to fall asleep to. Just make sure not to sleep on Big Cats.

Spencer, who performed many of the instruments on the record, will be joined by three instrumentalist friends to recreate much of Sleep Tapes at the Dinkytowner this Thursday night, as part of “Last of the Record Buyers” series. Show starts at 9pm and the price of $3 will surely be worth your while.

Hey y’all, the Twin Cities Daily Planet just published my review of El Guante’s Haunted Studio Apartment. This album’s amazing and well worth giving a listen to.

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/node/10431

Watch soon for a site overhaul, a new logo (or I guess a logo period) and articles on this weekend’s hip-hop festivities (the break/s and KRS-One) as well as some papers I’m giving at conferences.

Here’s a review coming out soon in The Liberator of Muja Messiah’s mixtape, MPLS Massacre. Watch for the magazine soon. And the official release party is this Thursday, March 20th, at 7th Street. $7 gets you in and a copy of the mixtape.

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Muja Messiah’s MPLS Massacre, a mixtape in advance of his full-length The Adventures of the B-Boy/D-Boy, deftly reveals many of the tensions—and sometimes outright contradictions—of himself, rap, and the world at large. Many are encapsulated in the album’s Intro and elaborated throughout Massacre, from the personal tensions of being “not your average half-white black guy,” as well as things like snitchin’ (“niggas yellin’ ‘stop snitchin’ then get mad when the cops don’t catch ‘em”).

Featuring numerous Twin Cities hip hop figures, including I Self Devine, St. Paul Slim, Muja’s mates from Raw Villa, and Slug, Massacre lays bare the tension between reppin’ where you’re from and where you want to go. Laced with Twin Cities references, Muja’s trying to show that the Cities ain’t just “backpackin’ and hippie/like it ain’t crackin’ in my city,” seeking success with a harder rap sound historically marginalized in the Cities. Yet he often turns to the sounds of the South for Massacre, especially on “Southside,” which combines his own Minneap home with the musical south of Memphis synths and drum beats.

One of the highlights of Massacre is the remix of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” as Muja skillfully adopts the words, rhyme patterns, and flow of M.I.A., making it much more than your standard remix. With its complicated global genealogy, from the Clash to the globe-hoppin’ M.I.A. (and featuring one of the Twin Cities’ own world musical travelers, the Ghanaian-born M.anifest) the song raises the stakes far beyond Minnesota.

While Muja says he’s “just trying to get y’all attention/without having to mention money, women, or the cars I’ve driven,” women and money are everywhere on Massacre, as are Muja’s musical molotovs for revolution. On “Huey P Newton,” Muja channels a hard rock version of the “Revolution” chorus to continue the struggles of Assata, Huey, Mumia, Dead Prez, and countless others. At the same time, though, he and many of the album’s guests partake in the gay-bashing and sexual objectification of women that fall in line with dominate American cultural norms. There’s a fine line, of course, between rebellion and cultural co-optation, and Muja seems to work this to his advantage. Neither black liberation nor narrative of hustlin’ and pimpin’ exhaust Muja’s rap identity. Even though having “one foot in the coffin, one foot in the cell,” as he raps on “MPLS Poppin,” doesn’t leave much room to move, Muja refuses to be boxed in.