There's usually not much point in spending a lot of time trying to deconstruct a musician's alias, but seriously: "DJ Mayonnaise"? Really? There has to be some sort of self-aware unrealness quotient behind the choice of that name, in which the palest of condiments (to the extent it was a punchline on ego trip's "The (White) Rapper Show") is slathered over decades of hip-hop tradition. You might be relieved to know that the Anticon producer and ostensible wheels-of-steelsman doesn't get that shticky, but his lack of a shtick is precluded by the lack of anything else in his music that might be considered a personality or a vision.
Still Alive is Mayo's first solo record since 1999's 55 Stories, and time's progressed a lot more than his aesthetic has. You ever heard any indie rap that doesn't crib its production template directly from Pete Rock? Good, there won't be any need to talk you down from what might otherwise be a severe panic attack. After all, some of the beats on Still Alive are a bit eerie and downtempo and have static crackling over them, so you might feel a little creeped out if you somehow missed DJ Shadow and Massive Attack and Boards of Canada and Tricky and the 1990s in general. The warmed-over atmosphere of Still Alive is going to be familiar-- maybe painfully so-- to anyone who ever came within squinting distance of a MoWax comp or knows at least two Luke Vibert aliases, and if there's anything here that works, it works in the exact same way every aforementioned artist (except, OK, maybe Pete Rock) has worked in the past.
So: opener "Post Reformat" galumphs along with flatulent synth-bass and Blue Man Group percussion, with the only vibrant element-- a brief, solitary pair of guitar notes-- coming at just past the three-minute mark. (Enjoy them while you can; they're immediately followed by some muddy, scraped-up vocal hook that sounds like Bugs Bunny imitating Milk D from Audio Two; what he's actually saying is anyone's guess.) "The Windham Song" is a promising idea gone sour, Southwestern desert noir funk with neon hums and a Robert Rodriguez-ready guitar undercut by an unfocused rhythmic momentum and a goopy Skinemax saxophone. "Munjoy Moments" is the requisite slab of indie-pop-meets-electro mush, with tinkling synthetic chimes that make it too precious to pop/lock/roll and a crusty, pigeonshit bassline rendering it too abrasive to be beautiful. And the one track with actual rapping on it, "Strateegery", features K-the-I??? cracking Dubya snaps too hackneyed for "Lil' Bush" and dropping first-draft bumper sticker phrases ("I salute the brave new world order"; "Not me voting for the lesser of two evils") that Mr. Lif would've tossed out at age 16.
DJ Mayonnaise's website features a telling origin story, where the Anticon member later known as Alias shames a school-age Mayo for being big into Guy. That could be why Still Alive doesn't have any life in its rhythm -- even if Mayo spent the subsequent years learning the benefits of hip-hop, his music shows that he's spent even more time worrying about how to avoid the temptations of pop futurism. If the price you pay for ditching new jack swing is a discography filled with grooveless stasis, make mine Teddy Riley. And hold the Miracle Whip.
