How minimal is too minimal? British hip-hop kid Req is a minimalist, though he's not a student of Philip Glass and doesn't know or care about microsound. What Req is about is beats, with every trace of meat and gristle gnawed off. He wants to see how little he can leave inside his raw, repetitive loops and keep people interested. He'll take a drum break or an 808 pattern and let it run solo longer than just about anyone outside of a break record compiler.
Req's second album for Warp consists of tracks selected by pal Damian Harris, boss of his former label Skint. Some tracks were created specifically for the new album; some have been lying around for several years. Roughly half the record is strictly rough-and-ready breaks. "Ry Drum I" is total trash funk, with a booming loop that sounds like it was recorded in a shed behind Fred Sanford's house. The only accouterment comes from a squelchy bass synth and a cheap organ, and they play about three notes between them. "Worthing Line" swaps the sampler for a drum machine, lets the programmed beat play essentially untouched for almost five minutes (save a couple of fills) and adds a few eerie chords. "Rhythm 77", amazingly, makes do with even less for much of its length, with only a faint ghost of synth chords occasionally creeping in between the beats.
Car Paint Scheme, like its immediate predecessor, Sketchbook, is a grab bag, and the rest of the record is fleshed out with other styles. It's not completely instrumental: Two tracks have some cockney spitting from Kid Acne. His throwback style fits the music well and, of course, Req gives him plenty of room to breath, supplementing his beats with turntable scratching. "Train Jam" is built around the kind of old funk guitar riff that makes you want to track the original down, and unlike the bulk of the record its mood is sunny and bright. The beat on "Runout Scratches" sounds built from what the title implies, connecting Req with the long line of turntable artists who have fetishized surface noise.
Incredibly, Req makes his naked rhythms work most of the time. There's nothing mind-blowing about the music by any stretch, but the minimal beatscapes manage somehow to evoke a desolate, broken down street scene. Perhaps he's tapping into our collective memory of graffiti documentaries, the images of colorful walls set against decay that's inevitably accompanied by old school hip-hop soundtracks. But there's something uncanny about how enjoyable these simplistic, looped rhythms can be. You should, of course, be doing something else while this plays, though, because these tracks won't likely hold all your attention. Despite the praise he deserves for doing so much with so little, Car Paint Scheme is ultimately a bit flat and one dimensional, the sort of thing you put on very occasionally when the mood strikes.
