Brendon "Alias" Whitney, a member of Oakland's "Anticon" posse,
is a white kid who weds introspective lyrics and
atmospheric pop-jazz electronics.
The intuitions of the abrasive and eclectic mini-album Three Phase Irony (2001) were fully developed on
The Other Side of the Looking Glass (2002),
a collection of raps in a "pub declamation" style over dark instrumentals
that constitutes a radical revision of hip-hop standards.
The spastic beats and psychedelic vocal effects in Jovial Costume,
the thick and ominous instrumental of Dying To Stay,
the jazzy pastiche Inspirations Passing,
and the sci-fi overtones of Getting By (Version 2) and Opus Ashamed,
explore a vast lush territory.
The semi-singalong Watching Water (the standout) employs overdubbed and echoes vocals over a simple piano pattern.
And Black Tea is totally otherworldly, a glitchy and industrial musical purgatory, a hint of a post-beat aesthetic that unfortunately Alias never fully developed.
The languid prayer of Slow Motion People stands poles apart from traditional hip-hop rapping.
His rapping is weak but the propulsive beats of Pill Hiding and Final Act prop it up to quasi-anthemic levels.
His innovative ideas were
further explored on the instrumental five-song EP The Eyes Closed (2003),
a prelude to the (mostly) instrumental album Muted (2003).
The album is a mixed bag.
He loses himself in facile electronic vignettes like Beginagain and
Full Circle Blues,
experiments with the song format in Unseen Sights (the closest thing to a regular pop ballad)
and with the dance jam in Am I Cool Now?,
and indulges in narcissistic touches, like the cute organ sample of Sixes Last and the tribal beat of Shoes, Cars, And Soft Drinks.
The standouts are the cosmic vision of Again For The First Time and
the spaced-out synth-jazz of Caged In Wasting Away,
but also (in the opposite vein) the
booming and irrepressible I Would Like To Write A Song That.
Deep Puddle Dynamics was a collaboration among Sole,
Alias,
Doseone and
Sean "Slug" Daley,
documented on The Taste of Rain (Anticon, 1999).
All Things Fixable (2005) is another mostly instrumental album.
Alias wastes his talent in compositions influenced by
easy-listening or vaporwave like All Things Fixable and
Fuel The Fear Without Words.
Half the Devil is a hip-hop version of trans-global music.
The gloomy industrial vignette Mutedbobmaiisdada is the only standout.
Lilian (2005), a collaboration with his little brother Ehren Whitney,
relied on his lush fusion of singer-songwriter of the 1970s, trip-hop of the 1990s and jazztronica of the 2000s but failed to leave a mark.
Brookland / Oaklyn (Anticon, 2006) was a collaboration between
Alias and female vocalist Rona "Tarsier" Rapadas released under
the moniker Alias & Tarsier.
Resurgam (2008),
that also includes collaborations with Yoni Wolf (Why?) and The One Am Radio,
continued the trend started with
Lilian venturing even further out of hip hop into generic electronic
dance music (Resurgam, Autumnal Ego).
By comparison,
Fever Dream (2011),
that returned to using instrumental samples rather than live instruments,
felt elaborate and meandering, somewhere between ambient music and trip-hop,
(Lady Lambin', Tagine). De facto, Alias had
transformed the cerebral aspect of the Anticon collective into a painstaking
process of soundscape construction. The drawback was a congenital lack of
vitality, only partially mitigated by the fury of Dahorses.
Pitch Black Prism (2014), perhaps his worst album ever, Alias collaborated with
Doseone on Less Is Orchestra (2018) and
Forever Is Orchestra (2018) is the companion instrumental album.
Better Unsung
The Delta Mirror x Alias
