Allen Avanessian, owner and operator of the Los Angeles-based label Plug Research, had always wanted to bring together his entire roster for a collaborative project that reflects his imprint's commitment to progressive electronic music. When Pole's Stefan Betke asked him to put together an album for Betke's own ~scape label, Avanessian jumped at the chance to finally put the record together, and before he knew it, he'd enlisted Jimmy Tamborello (mastermind of Dntel, and the music half of The Postal Service) for production help, as well as a slew of guest producers and MCs for the project. The outcome would finally be dubbed Headset, and released by Plug Research in North America under exclusive license from ~scape.
The results are possibly best introduced by comments made by Avanessian himself: "This is not a hip-hop record, not an electronic record, and definitely not a jazz record, but we're influenced by all of these and love to create our own interpretations of these genres... We were listening to a lot of hip-hop over the years, and sometimes feel that commercial hip-hop producers bring a lot of new ideas and a fresh approach to making music, so yes, this record was influenced by people like The Neptunes, Timbaland, Dr. Dre, Kanye West, as well as producers on our label."
Read between the lines, and Avanessian says it himself: Headset's debut, Spacesettings, attempts to meet some of the greatest hip-hop beatmakers of the past five years on their own terms, with very little of the talent or ear for innovation that made them the most sought-after producers working today. The result, unfortunately, is worse in execution than it reads on paper: Spacesettings is liquidated, hookless, and entirely flaccid. While it's great that Plug Research finally at least sort of respects commercial pop music-- that "sometimes feel..." bit just kills me-- there's not much more to Headset than its repetitive, RZA-regurgitating, Tamborello-does-hip-hop gimmick.
Opener "Then Again" and the unwitting remix track that follows it, "Back Before", play into all the bad indie hip-hop stereotypes: forgettably minimal low-tech beats, occasional ambient noises, and some anonymous kid rapping about Truth. Save Non-GENETIC's gem, "But lookit/ You're steppin' like your boxers on crooked," listeners shouldn't expect much from the Headset MCs. It's great that word gymnast Subtitle has breath control-- and mentions it often-- on "Breath Contrails"; it's just a shame he's so full of shit.
Elsewhere on Spacesettings, instrumental tracks are consistently too long and lazy. Daedelus's flute-and-piano sound collage "Outward Sound" opens interestingly but then goes nowhere; "Grasping Claw (The Beginning)" is where One Word Extinguisher meets Deadringer, but without the technique of the former or the hooks of the latter. The greatest offender, however, is saved for the penultimate track: On "Previously Smooth Sophistication", "smooth" is the operative word, and "jazz" is the missing one.
Two moments very briefly rescue Spacesettings from total monotony: Lady Dragon's feisty Japanese rap on "Grasping Claw", and the lush, pretty string parts at the end of the Thomas Fehlmann-enhanced closer "Sound of a Squint". Sadly, these two temporary high points are not quite high enough to carry the record. So, at its best, Spacesettings is a forgivable misstep with ambitions its creators couldn't hope to live up to; at its worst, it's hip-hop for assholes, another "enlightened" set from unskilled collegiate MCs whose piety amounts to little more than deep-seated inferiority crises.
