Instrumental hip-hop is pretty much bullshit, isn't it? The idea is fine, I guess. (Though, you know, beats and rhymes.) But has any genre-- call it downtempo or trip-hop or whatever-- forced us to sit through more un-reconstituted dreck than rap-less rap? For every beat with a pretty texture over it, there are hundreds-- dozens on Ninja Tune and affiliates alone-- of canned breaks with keyb noodling or swiftly EQ'd samples. The '90s gave us worse plagues, but not by much.
Still, the one good thing about wallpaper is that it's just there. And unless it's screaming at you in neon green, well, then ignorability is part of the deal. So the scrap heap of milquetoast beats is more of an environmental problem than an aesthetic one. (I'm gonna call James Lavelle right now to bitch about his part in global warming.) But here's a few reasons why Dabrye's newly back-in-print 2002 mini-LP Instrmntl shouldn't be tarred with my (broad) brush.
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Length: Dude, it's 30 minutes. There are plenty of things that can be done in 30 minutes that don't require a Ring Cycle to fill. Like brushing your teeth and shaving and having your coffee and reading the newspaper and walking to work. I did it this morning and I found the whole process invigorating. Or maybe I just didn't notice much. But when I did, there were some good beats. Does an instrumental hip-hop album need to be 80 minutes? Does any album?
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Warmth: Dabrye's first mini-LP, One/Three, had a bit of the tech-house chill to it, that ol' operating room funk. Like Zapp stranded in Antarctica until Roger Troutman's throat closed up and he needed mittens to operate his drum machines. Like Jam & Lewis if they left the door to that Twin Cities studio open. (Okay, I'm reaching now.) Which, admittedly, was part of what gave it an identity. Instrmntl is much more "organic" (no, wait, come back), with punchy standup bass, buzzing keyboards, flutes (yes, I know). How deep is that bass on "Take Me Home"? And why is it only 1:45? (A: See #1.)
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Beats: Sure, a lot of it is canned Jay Dee, but whatever--it still works. It's the lack of reverb, those hard thwacks right down the middle of the snare. Or snipped handclaps (the power of truncated samples). Or lovingly sculpted, fatty kicks. Or the almighty cowbell. He gives the beats an apple-crisp snap or toothy pull you just can't get through faded breaks.
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Catchiness: The thing is just catchy. The main reason is that Dabrye fills these little Joseph Cornell beat-boxes with so much just-so detail. Most downtempo is happy to loop a loop for six minutes and slip out for a smoke. There are the little keyboard vamps that playfully tug at the bass on "Intrdctn". The flute that darts like a kingfisher in "Won", before the whole track (claps, cowbell, stinging synths) drops out. But sometimes, as on "Evelyn", it's spare and still catchy, just fudge-thick keybs flecked with little white chocolate chips of filigree. As with any formula, some people are just more talented than others. It's just a shame that Dabrye, like Mr. Urban Tribe, gets lost in the sluice of funk fakers.
