Listen up, kids; it's time for me to play like Mr. Rogers. The lesson today concerns the issue of paradox, 'cause this record unfolds like a case fresh out of Webster's: Despite its show of technical proficiency, Muted, the latest full-length outing from Anticon producer Alias, suffers for lack of sentiment or expressive accomplishment. The album's desolate, downbeat production provides the album with a sense of internal subversion, and also represents a pinnacle of craftsmanship, but the tracks are sterile and underdeveloped, suffocating and slumbering through a heavy-handed hour of dirty industrial drum rhythms and distorted glitchwork.
Breaking almost completely from Alias' hip-hop backlog, Muted is largely instrumental, with the exception of one rhyme-laden track near the record's end, and the unfortunate "Unseen Sights", where The Notwist's Markus Acher lends his tender vocals in a potentially perfect fit-- one which at least had the barebones makings to parallel his own work in tone and vibrancy. Unfortunately, Acher's insouciant mastery of crestfallen sobriety is dredged from a metallic sea of mercurial and wandering breakbeats. Even his own lyrics, which clumsily allude to American media hiding the bigger picture and abstracting the truth, fail to make a positive impact, and instead freeze him as a caricature of anti-war/anti-consumer backlash. The track's structure and application are too sterile to play on Acher's emotive prowess, and the near-miss collaboration stings, feeling at best like a Notwist demo.
Much of the album rides a rocky terrain of wandering breakbeats and ambient under/overtones, but a handful of well-realized moments thankfully save the record from infamy. "Full Circle Blues" is a windy, sensual breath on a metal playground full of robots. "Am I Cool Now?", a moment of self-conscious reflection, features the vocal snippet, "Anticon ain't hip-hop yo/ They try to hard to be weird/ They're only popular on the Internet/ It's just stupid nerd rap," amidst a slaughtering barrage of drums and heavy beats. "Chew the Fat", the record's standout, then slides in with an echoing, searching, teeter-totter affair of lively electronic manipulations and release/relapse drumwork. Additionally, the closer (with the exception of the 15-minute break to hide the hidden track) carries the torch of capability with a nice use of space and a more focused compositional design.
Of course, I'm not out to deprive anyone of their sole sanctuary, being that I might fall into the category of Internet-nerd-critic-- and, as Muted loudly proclaims, Alias is too well informed and knows the game too well to succumb to pressure-- but if he turned some of the knobs down just a bit, and turned up the heat, maybe I could hear a little better.
