yay new aesop rock album out titled "The Impossible Kid"

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from pitchfork which gave it an 8.2

the review:

"kim once famously said he thinks of 16-bar verses as a grid and measures out exactly how many syllables can fit neatly within it. If this is true, then Aesop Rock’s grid must look like the cascading sea of glyphs from The Matrix. He has a wickedly extensive vocabulary, once deemed by a study to be the largest in rap, and he uses it to warp time and disrupt balance with phonetic pairings that sprout out unpredictably, an idea best articulated on the Busdriver collaboration "Ego Death": "I am ivy up the goddamn lattice/March to the math rock."

On "Rings," the single from his latest album The Impossible Kid and his second on indie rap mainstay Rhymesayers Entertainment, he eulogizes the visual art career he abandoned. "I left some years, a deer in the light/I left some will to spirit away/I let my fears materialize/I let my skills deteriorate," he raps, splitting all of the syllables on the back end. But he still is a visual artist in his way, coiling carefully articulated sentences into diagrams, each syllable a pixel in the frame of an image. He sketches in vibrant detail on Impossible Kid, balancing heavy verbiage with sharp clarity. This is what it sounds like when rap’s greatest wordsmith only uses the ones that count.

It's also the most specific Aesop Rock has ever been about what he’s thinking or feeling, and it borders at times on confessional. "Question: If I died in my apartment like a rat in a cage/Would the neighbors smell the corpse before the cat ate my face?/I used to floss the albatross like Daddy Kane with the chain/I’m trying to jettison the ballast with the hazardous waste," he asks on "Dorks." That doesn’t mean he’s making it easy; his yarns are still sometimes purposefully written like a puzzle with half the pieces missing. But the album loosely outlines the series of events and strained relationships that led him to abandon San Francisco for the seclusion of a cabin in the woods.

"Get Out of the Car" is a poignant reflection on loss and grief that points to the death of close friend and rapper Camu Tao as the starting point for much of his anguish. "Ah watch the impossible kid, everything that he touch turns promptly to shit/If I zoom on out I can finally admit, it’s all been a blur since ‘Mu got sick," he raps before diving down a rabbit hole of depression, explaining his withdrawal in expertly articulated tidbits and snapshots ("Into the woods go his alien tongue/It was that or a textbook faking of funk, and I can’t"). Then there’s "Blood Sandwich," which casts his brothers in starring roles in two memorable vignettes: In the first, his younger brother plays in a Little League game interrupted by a wayward gopher, a rodent that suffers a bloody end at the hands of the enraged coach. The second is a remembrance of his older brother's teen angst at being denied the opportunity to go to a Ministry show, resulting in a suicide threat. Later on, he studies the actions of his cat on "Kirby" before psychoanalyzing their relationship and society’s larger relationship with the felines as a whole, which have been everything from gods to memes. Each one of these songs constructs little worlds out of simple ideas using dexterous lyricism.

But The Impossible Kid is measured by more than its virtuosity. The soundbeds of dizzying synth abstractions, ominous piano crawls, and slow-strutting garage rock samples, all provided by Aesop Rock himself, are monuments to his growing skills as a producer. He is as detail-oriented with his beats as he is with his raps, providing the right mood at every occasion. Some of them are busy and swarming, while others are pleasantly simple, like "Lotta Years," giving Aesop the room to set up dialogue. Then there are beats that are simply hard-hitting, like "Rabies" and "Water Tower," with slapping drums that seem traditional until they stagger. These all supplement his writing, which is as crisp and as fluid as it has ever been, bending breakbeats to the whims of his strung-out cadences. Aesop Rock has yet to run out of words. After nearly 20-years in the rap game, he is still finding new means of self-expression."

the sample track:

blood sandwhich
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q5zNHNIewg

i like the wordy educated stuff. i know go figure
 
good god that song is good and brings up some sad memories or people i havent thought about in long time now. maybe i should call them. anyway here s the words as theyre were pretty good

blood sandwhich:


"Yup
Steps up to the plate
Little brother, Little League
'87 he was 8
Rookie season for the skinny slugger
Newly out of tee-ball
Pit against a pitcher with a ripper you could eat off
Church, and a grip of loons run to 3rd first
Granny yelling "Go Cubs!", nose in her word search
See MILFs like apes on a monolithic bleacher, and are advocating war and peace in lieu of sport and leisure
"Hi Peggy"
I was 10, chewing on a sweet tart
Little brother, left-field, Queen's guard
Mean arm, knees bent
Two out, two on bags
When I caught him staring down at something moving through the grass
Hold up
Tagged runner, and the whole cast rotate
Not before he could identify the culprit
Granny yelling, "Go Cubs!"
Graham yelling, "Gopher!"
New left-fielder give a f*** about a homer
Got a homie, little rodent, head and shoulders out his hovel
No baseball in the bubble
Ruh-roh
Parents thought it adorable
The players followed suit
Inning crawling to a close
Head coach not amused
Coach seeing red
Coach on the diamond dragging 27 inches of aluminum behind him
When he transverse third, the families turn nervous
The following is a transcript of man vs vermin
Here we go
Man stands out by a hole
Pest pops up to patrol
Man plays live whack-a-mole
In a scene that would try every child as adults
Woah
Pallbearer with a ball mitt
Thrown over the fence
Coach hit the bench
Both teams lose
"Good game. Good game"
Granny yelling "Go Cubs!", Cubs ain't playing

[Pre-hook 1]
My little brother is a funny dude
A lot of funny shit happened to him
My other brother pretty funny too
Ain't seen him in a minute though

[Hook]
Just in case of rough waters, I wanna put one up for my brothers
Just in case of rough waters, I wanna put one up for my brothers

[Verse 2]
Yup
Not a part of the machine
Big brother, big idea, 9-0, 16
Neubaten tee, plaid flannel laden adolescent art kid
Tony Hawk hair, Skinny Puppy denim
And a record player vomiting Alien Sex Fiend
Peel sessions in a Christian home for field testing
It's real youth in the palm of your hand
When your mom thinks Satan is involved in a band
We were buried in the Village Voice
Checking who was playing where
Pulled his head up out the paper, pushing out a single tear
Five words, like a beacon of light in the mist
"Ministry live at the Ritz"
It was Christ has risen to Chris
Three loaves, two fish
Miracle of mechanized loops on 2-inch
Coming to a theater he would be there in the flesh
Moms didn't say "No," but she didn't say "Yes"
Copped tickets, ha the plot thickens
Countdown to ultimate concert experience
Moms still worrying
"Why are they called Ministry? Are they a cult?"
Maybe she could properly investigate
Bought a mag with an Al Jourgensen interview
Read a couple sentences, glanced at a pic or two or three
That's all, no fair trial
Simply, "You will not be going to the show and that's final!"
What occurred next were the top of the lungs of a son who unjustly had lost what he loved
In a moment that would transcend anger to high art
Said, "This is something I am willing to die for!"
Can you even imagine a death in the fam from industrial fandom?
Anyway, no body count no concert and Chris kicked rocks in his mismatched Converse

[Pre-hook 2]
My older brother is a funny dude
A lot of funny shit happened to him
We hadn't spoken in a couple moons
I called him last night
"How you doing?"

[Hook]
Just in case of rough waters, I wanna put one up for my brothers
Just in case of rough waters, I wanna put one up for my brothers
Just in case of rough waters, I wanna put one up for my brothers"

from geinus lyrics

"“Blood Sandwich” is Aesop Rock’s ode to his two brothers via anecdotal personal narratives.

The first verse and pre-hook paint a picture of his younger brother, Graham, by telling the story of a gopher interrupting one of his Little League Baseball games. The second verse and pre-hook characterize Chris, his older brother, by divulging his love of industrial and goth rock bands, and his rebellious punk attitude.

On Facebook, Aes said of the song:

I grew up as a middle child between two amazing brothers. There are many stories from our youth that we enjoy revisiting when we get together – stories that have become classics to us. I wanted to visit one story about each of them, and dedicate a song to the two people that shaped me more than anyone else in this world."
 
and finally the full album stream. i really like this album. my brother in law first introduced me to him around labor days when he was getting popular but i just found it to be alright as it was expertly contrusted but a little to abstract for me to really attach myself to it and so i didnt follow up with him to much after the fire and knives e.p.. when i heard this album i went and checked out his last one called skelethon and found i really loved that one as well. i think him using a deeper voice and not being as nasally and gaining some life experience improved him music a lot. not that i wish hard times on anyone but getting divorced having your label go on hiatus under weird circumstances and the death of a friend all in your thirties, a reflective time anyway, can really add some meaningful perspective.

the impossible kid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQF6x_FgnJ0
 
Awsome! Servicing Stop
 
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Awsome! Servicing Stop

No idea what the link is because safari won't open it as it says it's an invalid address but i agree the impossible kid is awesome. I really like his work with own beats as blockheads was just to mid tempo for me. Took my wife to tell me that the stream is a video recreation of the shining. She loves that movie
 
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