(12.05.05) I’m sitting in my 6500 square foot loft in the middle of downtown
Atlanta as rain pours around me behind old factory windows. The stone
gray clouds give visualization to the white noise of the rain. It’s
midnight and a train is rolling by; a sole hanging light encompassed
by the glow of the never truly dark city illuminates me. There’s a
leak in the roof, creating a slow rhythm of thwops as drops of water
hit the plastic-lined trash can directly in front of me. We recently
acquired an old 70’s turntable/mixer wooden desk that can’t truly
be described in words, and it is with this that I sit and listen to
Aphilas new 12″ from Merck.
No soundtrack could be more fitting.
Aphilas blesses us with his Instrumentally Ill EP; a head-nodding
collection of downtempo beats and sampled grooves in the vein of DJ
Shadow and releases on Ninja Tune. Rife with old vinyl samples, Aphilas applies a
more melodic treatment than his contemporaries. Rooted in hip-hop,
this EP lives up to its name with an intelligent layering of jazzy
horns and strings beneath harmonically placed voices and keys from
thirty years ago. The beats are given a subtle IDM treatment, which
at points resemble labelmate Machine Drum, like on “Collective Memory
Loss” where syncopated triplets off beats and bass uplift the stoned
horns and filtered pads.
Clocking in at just over 35 minutes, the Instrumentally Ill EP
showcases Aphilas ass-shaking groove styles while filling out the mix
with well-placed and well-picked layers of funk.
Instrumentally Ill is out now on Merck.
