Byrne has kept in the public eye with a string of novel art projects but it's been a criminally long time since I've heard any of his new music. It's a pleasure to find an opportunity to get reacquainted, what with Byrne & Eno releasing their new collaboration. "Strange Overtones" is an expertly produced track that calls upon chirping reggae tics, lightweight synthesizers & the usual cross-genre mishmash for which these artists have become so well known. It's a meta song-about-songwriting story, wherein Byrne eavesdrops on amateur musicians & silently roots for them to work out the kinks in the song he hears them writing. It's surprisingly coherent & linear in light of his past lyrical work, but it's also tender & delivered with subtle melancholy.

[ play ] | [ download mp3 ]

Innovative Life: The Anthology 1984-1989 hails from a disorienting moment in rap history: it chronicles Arabian Prince's earliest electro-rap oddities, before he gained notoriety as a founding member of N.W.A. "Let's Hit the Beach" features a deep, stripped-down beat spliced with digitalized seagulls and other coastal sound effects - a thin sampling by today's standards, but surprisingly prophetic in light of this decade's electro-rap boom. The last half of the track segues into a bout of coy, silly grandstanding, and it plays like advice to today's emcees: don't take yourself too seriously. The best - from Jay-z to Kool Keith to Aesop Rock - never do.

[ play ] | [ download mp3 ]

You remember Four Tet's "She Moves She," about halfway through, how a distorted synthesizer jackknifes through a tinkling, watery bell and string section? It was so sudden that I thought another song had kicked up in the background on my computer the first time I heard it. "Ya-Ya-Ya" by Larytta gives that same distinct impression. It isn't so much about interplay or some sort of magical coalescence of elements here, as it is two separate entities - the vocals and the instrumentation - circling each other like predators from a careful distance, nurturing an uneasy truce. Strong, layered (and keenly manipulated) acapellas fend off synthetic toms until the two sides hit a sort of strained, tense balance in the middle. Expect a lot of sharp turns over the course of these five minutes.

[ play ] | [ download mp3 ]