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Busdriver - Jhelli Beam

Rating

RIYL

Sage Francis
MF Doom
TV on the Radio
Aesop Rock

Release Date

06/09/2009

Tracklist

1 Split Seconds (Between Nannies and Swamis)
2 Me-Time (with The Pulmonary Palimpsets)
3 Handfuls of Sky
4 Scoliosis Jones
5 Least Favorite Rapper (feat. Nocando)
6 Quebec and Back
7 Do the Wop
8 World Agape
9 Manchuria (feat. Myka Nyne)
10 Unsafe Sextet/Gilded Hearts of Booklovers
11 Happy Insider (feat. Nick Thorburn of Islands)
12 I've Always Known
13 Fishy Face (feat. John Dietrich of Deerhoof)

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Recent Ratings
Aaron Yarborough	thetsaiguy

West Coast underground rapper Busdriver (aka Regan Farquhar) is now on his sixth solo release. Utilizing an unusual style of rapping and unconventional wordplay over eccentric beats, Busdriver has become a favourite among indie scenesters and the Pitchfork crowd. Falling into the subgenre of 'abstract hip-hop', much like abstract art, you'll either love it or hate it depending on what you view as 'art' . Take the abstract art of Jackson Pollock: some say genius, others say a lazy, colourful mess of nothing. Similarly, abstract hip-hop brings us to the same crossroad; and for me, usually translates to nonsensical gibberish over uncomfortable joints, and trying to find any coherence on Jhelli Beam will leave you with nothing but bewildering confusion and possibly a headache.

Beats are supplied largely from producers Daedelus and Nobody (amongst a few others), and although following a similar path from Bus' last release, Roadkillovercoat, they are electronically heavier than past work. Lead single “Me Time” is a bit of a departure in sound and features Busdriver dancing around over a sped up sample of Mozart’s “Piano Sonata No. 11 in A Major” in a similar fashion to that of the Bach-sampling of "Imaginary Places” (from his 2002 release, Temporary Forever), and while it probably showcases Busdriver's crazy flow to its fullest extent, it also evidences that Busdriver relatively spits nothing of worth.

Standout track “Least Favourite Rapper” is graced by a guest spot from Nocando and is a breath of fresh air among the choking smog of the rest of the album. With his laid back flow contrasting Busdriver's often unintelligible, tongue-twisting, sarcastic self-deprecation, for the first time you can actually make out some cohesion, but still, the track could've been so much more.

Further pandering to get the scenesters' pants moist, the super-hip John Dietrich from Deerhoof and Islands’ Nick Thornburn grace “Fishy Face” and “Happy Insider” respectively, and both seem like messy psychedelic mash-ups of Animal Collective and TV on the Radio, which in print I'm sure sounds like a wet dream to hipsters, but in reality, they're more a soundtrack to a choking, claustrophobic nightmare.

Busdriver isn't rapping about big rims and bitches; he's rapping about... actually, I don't really know what the hell he's rapping about, because over the course of this album, you'll be hard pressed to understand anything he says. Busdriver isn't making anything near mainstream hip-hop and this is his niche, but he almost seems to be making his music as uncomfortable and unconventional as possible, and maybe he has to, because the moment Busdriver releases anything even remotely resembling mainstream rap, I'm sure he'll be shunned by his fickle elitist fanbase, and then there will surely be a whole lot less geeky white kids at his gigs, which practically makes up his entire audience.

With Busdriver claiming on the opening line of the album, “Be real. Concious rap failed us,” I couldn't agree more.

--Rich Taylor