Too many hip-hop records these days fail to offer a stable atmosphere. Maybe it's the fear of a looming backlash that drives artists to cram as much diversity as possible into their records, but while this often shows that an artist is capable of working within more than just one sonic realm, it also frequently results in an unfocused end product. Some producers come close, but fall just short of perfecting that delicate balance, lacking the kind of important, subtle changes that keep listeners listening. But then there's DJ Signify, a New York-based producer whose debut album is a singularly dark, instrumental clinic which manages to maintain its unique identity while shifting styles within similar contexts.
As with any master beatsmith, DJ Signify counts subtlety among his greatest strengths, using his backdrops to lend depth and color to his stories. Throughout the album, his drumwork is staggeringly confident, in some cases creating counter-melodies around his samples, while halting for emphasis in others: After Buck 65 drops his verse on "Winters Going", the drums detach from the guitar loop, a vocal sample enters briefly, and a different set of more prominent beats suddenly enter to dominate the soundscape. A less patient producer might have run that vocal sample into the ground, but Signify wisely employs it just once, at the end of the track, to hit his point home.
But while he may seem to have an affinity for an approach based on the purest elements of the art, Signify exhibits many styles throughout Sleep No More. Whether he's using sinister carnival funk and 60s bell tones on "Peekaboo Part 1", vulnerable icy keys and heavy drums on "Where Did She Go?", or a processed yet organic pulse and stuttered synth stomps on "Peekaboo Part 3", Signify manages to make even unlikely sounds feel like they belong.
The big selling point for many will be the involvement of two of the underground's biggest magnates, Sage Francis and Buck 65. Francis' contributions are all slightly tilted to themes of unfulfilling adulthood and relationships ("At night, I'm more than certain, she hurts inside from all this shit/ Drawing a curtain, blurring the line before crossing it") that wouldn't have been out of place on his Personal Journals, while Buck 65 strings together a David Lynch-esque story-in-reverse. And while it may seem like a bad idea to pair two loosely affiliated Anticon rappers with vaguely Anticon-esque beats, the emcees never stilt the continuity of the album, and in fact, leave you wanting more.
Buck 65, whose key strength lies not in his flow or delivery, but in his lyrics and storytelling, delivers the standout performance on "Stranded". Dictating to a mindblowing beat backed by a glitchy metronome drumline, fuzzy synth, subtle chimes, and even a saxophone solo, Buck 65 uses his incredible power of description to put the listener inside his story. Here, he introduces us to a hotel owner that "looked like Peter Fonda and smelled like Jack Daniels" and a room with "a sign above the toilet that said 'Don't flush your needles,'" closing with the memorable couplet, "Unable to speak, our thoughts were in brackets/ We called it a night and slept in our jackets."
Opening with concurrent waves of distortion, the strongest individual beat comes with the Nick Drake-referencing "Five Leaves Left (For Lauren)". Though initially framed by monarchial fanfare with scratches and a classic boom-bap, the sequence quickly shifts to a chopped choir, invoking the work of both Sixtoo (who engineered Sleep No More) and Non Prophets producer Joe Beats.
Of course, like most records, Sleep No More isn't without its share of misses: The jarring sound experiment "Shatter and Splatter" disrupts the album's flow three-quarters in, while the six-minute closer, "Breathe", doesn't offer enough variety to justify its lengthy scratch solo. Nonetheless, two misses out of 17 makes for a pretty solid ratio, and all told, Sleep No More's brilliant journey into sample-based experimentation easily places DJ Signify in a league with the genre's best-known producers.
