(12.10.05) There’s been a reoccurring cinematic theme in leftfield instrumental
music crossing my desk recently: movie samples from all manner of
B-grade films of the 1950s and 1960s. This crops up heavily in
Peppermint Styles, electronic producer Smaze’s new release
under his Conrad Newholmes persona. Movie sampling is the de rigeur
manner of inserting “content” into instrumental tracks and, if you
loop it and chop it up as Smaze does, it simply becomes another aspect
of the mood. Instrumental hip-hop is all about mood, really, all
about injecting itself into your head and bringing about a change in
your timbre and tonality. “I may be whatever I wish to be,” a woman
says in “After All.” When asked what she wishes to be, she replies,
“I wish to be free.” And a lonesome harmonica wails off into the
night, lending a cinematic perspective — a panoramic wistfulness for
the Open West — to a track which has been heretofore grounded in
urban jazz vibe. Think Morricone sneaking the spaghetti western into
a Dr Dre track.
This is the way Smaze makes leftfield instrumental hip-hop his own:
cinematic, recursive, funky and filled with echoes of murky jazz clubs
and empty studios where drum machines tick to their own internal
clocks. “Beat Down the Streets” lifts electronic handclaps from
“Rockit”-era Herbie Hancock (as well as appropriating some of the
ancillary limberness of Laswell’s production) and combines this rhythm
with a wiggling Casio melody and a thick fugue of funk into a rolling
street party. “Noonday Night” throws together a few vocal samples and
drops them into a hip-hop mix with a piano, a guitar and an accordion
before crescendoing in a choral “Hallelujah!” chorus. It’s a melange
of spices and genres that finds some jumbled gumbo-like synthesis, a
undulating cut-hop that throws a nod or two to DJ Shadow while still
going off on its own across the rooftops.
Songbirds burble in the background of “Erostika” while Moog
synthesizers wistfully pine away in the presence of a chorus of eight
young children intent on making choral angels with their wordless
harmonies. A bit of ’60s kitsch exotica slips in with a breathless
chanteuse in tow and, as they leave the door open, a hint of strings
from the next room can be heard. “King Sucks” stirs Danny Kaye,
Vincent Price and a brimstone-breathing Biblical preacher into a
percussion-heavy downtempo number, and Smaze compresses all these
elements into a claustrophobic mix. It’s a smokey counterpoint to the
effusive bleep-happy synthesizer and flute duet of “Earth Dirt the
Champ,” a track that could easily be the incidental music for a
surreal children’s show about a eco-terrorist intent on saving the
planet for all the squirrels and bunnies.
Drums, flutes and a swirling melody straight of the Blaxploitation era
propel “Electric Snotnose” as if it were the inner soundtrack running
through a b-boy’s head as he went down the corner store for some 40s
while “Look Out the Windows” begins as a creepy homage to Hitchcock
before scooting off into mood music for a stylish noir safe-cracking
thriller. It’s impossible to keep up with Smaze’s influences and
stylistic flourishes. Sure, broadly speaking, I can toss this in the
“downtempo instrumental” bin or even the “leftfield hip-hop” crate,
but that’s just junking Peppermint Styles in with the rest of
the dross which is filling the stores. This record should be on the
front display with a sign under it that says: All You Need.
Peppermint Styles is the coy fluidity of exotica making love in
the back room to sex kitten cocktail jazz and blunt-blinded hip-hop.
At the same time. And it takes ’em both in a DP session filled with
minty freshness.
Peppermint Styles is out now on Couchblip!
