The Zipstream: DLO's chill hip-hop instrumentals; El Guante's spooky side trip
Article Tools
More On Repeat
Welcome to The Zipstream, a semi-regular new column in which The A.V. Club will round up new local albums, mixtapes, and EPs that Madison-connected artists share via such channels as Bandcamp pages and upload sites. Got something you'd like us to consider? Email sgordon@theonion.com.
DLO The Iceman: Pempstrumentals Vol. 1
Madison hip-hop artist DLO The Iceman has been making beats for 11 years, but until the other day, The A.V. Club just knew him as a solo rapper and one of two MCs in the great local hip-hop band Dumate. On the 26 tracks of his verse-less new Pempstrumentals mix, DLO bumps along in steadily old-school fashion, but also embraces the chill elegance of piano, synth, and sitar samples. From the glitchy strings and hand drums of "Intro," he makes brevity and variety his strong suits. Inspired by the late J Dilla's 2006 mix Donuts, DLO keeps all but one of the tracks under two minutes, deliberately forcing listeners to switch gears just as they're settling into, say, the bubbly bliss of "Yesterday." Speaking of cool local cuts, DLO and his Dumate cohort Man Mantis are nearly done with a full-length collaboration under the name IceMantis. Download here. (Dumate opens for Digable Planets on Weds., Nov. 11 at The Annex.)
Wake The City: Return To El Guante's Haunted Studio Apartment
El Guante moved to the Twin Cities a few years ago, but Madison can still take pride in shaping the MC/spoken-word-spewer's warped frame of mind and chest-shove delivery. He says his new collaboration with fellow MC and producer See More Perspective, Wake The City, is a "fun, mixtape-style" jaunt on the way to his next album, An Unwelcome Guest (a collaboration with Minneapolis beatmaker Big Cats!). That probably explains why Return includes an "Army Of Darkness Remix" of "Bring Out Your Dead," which initially came out Guante's solo album El Guante's Haunted Studio Apartment. Hip-hop and spooky graveyard fog find a surprisingly tight chemistry on "Land Lord," though. It's a reminder of the Guante Madison's known all along: A dude who can't help being whimsical any more than he can help being aggro-dead-serious. Download here. (El Guante says he'll have a Madison CD-release show, but possibly not until next year.)
Slightly less new: Speaking of formerly Madison-based artists, Dietrich Gosser's 2008 album What The Buzzsaw Sings is up on Bandcamp now, and it still gets to us. Gosser's patient songwriting and Dan Kuemmel's innovative, ambient percussion put most other singer-songwriter projects to shame. We interviewed the two last year.
