Parts of Garbology get so deep into junkyard blues that they remind me of latter-day Tom Waits, and I assume that’s how Aes wants it.ĭespite those progressions, though, what really strikes me about Garbology is how it doesn’t exist in conversation with circa-now rap music at all. Even as he nods back to classic rap signifiers - like the way the horn on “Legerdemain” seems to quote the oft-sampled riff from the Lafayette Afro Rock Band’s “Darkest Light” - he keeps things skronky and homemade for Aesop Rock. (As a producer, Aes is interested in many of those things, and if I didn’t know otherwise, I probably would’ve assumed that Aes produced Garbology himself.) Blockhead clearly understands Aesop Rock more than most people. Blockhead is less drawn to traditional boom-bap production, more interested in deep grooves and cymbal-splashes and squelchy guitars. Aesop raps more deliberately, finding new cadences even as he continues to map the crags of his own mental landscape. Here, for example, is Aesop Rock bragging: “Aes loves all animals and plant life/ Songbirds eat from his hand, you goddamn right.” Here is Aesop Rock talking shit: “I wish you nothing but the gentle kiss of yellow piss/ I give you nothing but the number for my exorcist.” And here is Aesop Rock discussing some of the things that he likes and doesn’t like: “I like glassy lake water and old maps/ Tall tales with black sails and skull flags/ Cold lemonade and OG Golden Axe/ I don’t like to talk about the UFO crash.”īoth Aesop Rock and Blockhead have developed stylistically since they first started working together. Aesop Rock has always been one of rap’s great linguistic thinkers, and there are turns of phrase on Garbology that I had to type out, just so that I could sit and look at them.
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But Garbology doesn’t sound like a man forcing himself to write as a way to stave off depression. In Garbology, I can hear plenty of sadness and anger and boredom and free-floating dread - feelings that, in different ways, have powered every Aesop Rock record since time immemorial. Writing is hard, too, but at some point I had to pick one.” So Aesop got Blockhead to make the beats, and he wrote and wrote and wrote. But the idea of making a beat felt like math homework, and drawing is just so hard. I knew at some point I had to get back to making something. In the press release for Garbology, Aesop explains that he started work on the album this past January, when he was feeling unmoored over the death of a close friend: “The world got real weird during those months. This wasn’t exactly the plan, but for Aesop Rock, there never is a plan. Last week, though, the two reunited to release Garbology, their first-ever full-on collaborative album. In recent years, Aesop Rock/Blockhead collaborations have grown less and less frequent. It might be my favorite Aesop Rock album. Last year, Aes released the fractured concept album Spirit World Field Guide, producing all the beats and rapping all the raps himself.
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Aesop Rock, a wandering soul, has dipped in and out of the public eye, but these days, he’s in productive mode. Blockhead is still in New York, and he keeps making records his collage album Space Werewolves Will Be The End Of Us All came out just a couple of months ago. As far as I know, it’s still the main source of income for both of them. (Underground rap has led other people to other places, too Aesop’s former Definitive Jux labelmate RJD2, for instance, saw one of his old beats become the Mad Men theme music.) But 20 years after “Daylight,” both Aesop Rock and Blockhead remain in that underground rap world. Usually, it’s a stepping stone to something else, whether that something else is overground rap or the working-stiff day-job world. For most people, underground rap isn’t exactly a sustainable career path.