When an artist becomes attached to a particular producer, the partnership sometimes tends to put a strain on the beatmaker's personality. In the case of Blockhead and Def Jux emcee Aesop Rock, their names were seemingly attached to each other's achievements almost immediately. But it was inevitable, considering Aesop's affinity for production, that Blockhead would take a stab at the instrumental game with his debut album for Ninja Tune, Music by Cavelight.
Far from experimental, Blockhead is a new breed of hard-edge traditionalist with few frills and a serious ear for samples. His rhyme-ready work is high-strung and bombastic, but, as is the custom with most indie producers, his instrumental work is darker and more placid by comparison. The album is rife with a variety of harrowing loops, as evidenced by the addictive, cleverly chopped guitar and layered strings of "Road Rage Breakdown" and the ebbing waves of bass, emotional piano, and orchestral arrangements on the stomping "Insomniac Olympics". One thing you'll notice, though, is a lack of pacing within each composition, as well as a general dearth of tonal variance throughout the span of the record.
Anyone who has followed Blockhead's career would most likely attest to, one major factor of production as his Achilles' heel: the drums. And while it is true that some of his earlier work (and the odd track on this album) was prone to a seriously poor choice of drum set, nothing bothers me more in his beats than the bass. The basslines themselves aren't bad at all, but the sounds associated with them are incredibly distracting in the full scheme of things. Couple that with the fact that his use of pitchshifted vocal samples (a la Kanye West or Just Blaze) is awkwardly jarring, and you begin to see a lot of missed potential.
But in the case of "You've Got Maelstrom", the sound works for the better. Opening with harmlessly faint keys and bongos, this track leaves the listener ill-prepared for its onslaught of scratches, a seemingly Elizabethan xylophone melody, and a sharp synthline. Soon, a saxophone is introduced, followed by a splash of flute that gets cut by timely vocal samples and crushed by Miami bass drums, horns, and tortured yelps. It doesn't have the emotional resonance harnessed by more time-tested instrumental compilers in the underground, but it's incredibly listenable nonetheless.
All around, Blockhead's first foray into solo sound collage is far from bad, but it rarely steals the show the way his rapper-associated work tends to. Then again, maybe this was his intention: to release a nuanced, traditional production clinic that has more in common with trip-hop and chillout than pure hip-hop grandiosity. Either way, even without the experimentation of Rjd2 or the upbeat nature of his better known work, there is definitely a place for the calm tones of Blockhead's debut.
