Anti-pop Consortium – Fluorescent Black
Posted by PacMusic on October 10, 2009
[Note to Editor] Do we get a special prize for going over 1000 words in a review?
Back after a number of years apart, Anti-Pop Consortium have reunited and dropped in with an explosion of technically interesting beats, intelligent lyrics and a coalition of styles that make this one of the most discussion worthy hip-hop albums of the year. I say discussion worthy, because there’s a lot in Fluorescent Black that you will either love or hate, and the fact that every artistic decision they’ve made on the album is well thought out and is musically valid, while still being very playful with the conventions of the genre, there’ll be much in here that will split opinion. I find myself shifting my stance on each track on each listen.
Now that I’ve heard Fluorescent Black a number of times, I find it hard to describe what I thought of it the first time I heard of it, but I didn’t like it. The vocals were monotonous, the beats were too messy and exaggerated, the effects were very overproduced and it left me quite frustrated. As I listened, and the initial impact of the album began to wear off, I began to experience some of the nuances of the production and my enjoyment of the Fluorescent Black escalated. It’s a little bit like when you get in a hot bath, firstly, you burn your knackers off lowering yourself into the steaming water. It’s uncomfortable, unnatural and it’s killing your sperm. But soon, you’re used to the heat and you can start enjoying yourself.
We start off Fluorescent Black with a messy guitar solo that peters out to be relapsed by a fuzzy bassline and a slow hiphop beat. The lethargic nature of this first track is a slow and steady build up to an album that is filled with fun and excitement. This is where my first indecision about the album. Is it clever to have your slowest song as an introduction or should you start off with a big, heavy, impressive song to plunge the listener right into the middle of Florescent Black, down the deep dark hole that is the rest of the album?
Then the next few tracks follow a more general, slightly uptempo hip-hop style, albeit with style and grace, with a very competent eclectic of different elements of hip-hop. They incorporate these elements in interesting ways, offset beats, synths, basslines and the vocals all melt nicely over one or another and is very delicious. Here ends anything that you could call a conventional rap song. They’ve lured us in with things we can relate to and can understand and will not freak out our conventions, only to smack us in the back of the head, while we’re not looking.
Then we get to what many people are saying is the cherry on this cake. “Volcano” is the first single from this album, and had gotten a great deal of positive criticism from every angle. With it’s catchy hook, it’s clean and easy to follow rhythm and dynamic form, it’s new without being too experimental and deserves all the positive opinions that it has been getting.
“Timpani” follows the catchy “Volcano” with what seems more like a 4:09 interlude to the album. We slow right down with some very simple rhythmic drums and some chanting, overlain with a very long monotonous rap that threads between the other elements. Then half way through the track, we get a more techno beat and electronic tones punctuating the heavy beat, intermittently splitting from the left to the right channel, with a very disorientating effect in my headphones. I fell down on the ground during this song and couldn’t get up until it had finished. I was rolling around all over the floor, shrieking and vomiting. Then I got off the bus…
Post-vomiting and rolling about, the Robots take over and say that they want to add robotic parts to our human forms to help us to deal with stress. The song discusses the fact that the human’s call this a revolution, but the ‘bots claim that it’s evolution. This difference of opinions is repeated ad nauseum with overly processed robotic voices that are very difficult to understand and it did take me a few listens to even begin to understand what they were talking about, which to me, seems a little counter-productive. This song is probably some kind of comment on our current dependence on computers and the internet, etc. Maybe it’s just a fantastical story of friendly robots trying to help us?
Fluorescent Black continues on with a number of very successful tracks that include more interesting beats, synthy overtones and fascinating lyrics, spoken with dynamism and presence that all fits together to provide us with something very unexpected and definitely worth the time it takes to get used to the irregular style. Scattered in with these fantastic works of art, are some experiments that didn’t work. Like Frankingstein’s monster, they come to life, then turn around and smack you in the face! The thing is, that which are which will depend on the listener and even sometimes it’s different section of the same song that shift between exciting and discouraging. I can guarantee that most of you will hate something about this section of the album, but don’t let this discourage you, because a lot of it is really great, but due to the experimental nature of Fluorescent Black, you can’t have everything work 100%, but this is how we move forward and advance with anything.
Wow, this review has gone long and I’ve barely scratched the surface of this album, such is the depth of the music and the huge variety that it offers, though without compromising or shifting from their hip-hop mission statement.
