Antipop Consortium

Following The Isolationist (1999), a collaboration with DJ Vadim, the Antipop Consortium rejuvinated hip-hop with their debut album, Tragic Epilogue (2000), that branched out towards the new aesthetics of "glitch" music (as in Autechre). Producer Earl Blaize's disjointed arrangements (reminiscent of early electro productions) propelled the trio of vocalists (poet "Beans" and former filmmakers "High Priest" and "M Sayyid") towards the almost psychedelic heights of What Am I via the oneiric Your World Is Flat, the futuristic Lift, the decadent 9.99, the free-form collage of Eyewall, and especially the atmospheric Monster Sex, wrapped in glitchy static noise. The weakest element is the rapping itself. Neither the voices nor the lyrics are particularly enticing. However, the monotonous narrations of Laundry, Sllab, Heatrays, and so on are the problem, not the solution. The arrangements only partially redeem the words. Even when they are inventive, they sound shy and thin.

Their "digital hip-hop" became even more ambitious on Shopping Carts Crashing (2001), although the real songs mostly failed (M being the notable exception) and the best was to be found in the brief instrumental intermezzos and in a couple of futuristic tracks (Excerpt From The Forthcoming Epic, Systaltic Quiescence).

Arrhythmia (2002) was much more conventional and accessible, almost "pop" despite the name of the consortium. Bubblz flirts with synthpop, the synth line of Ping Pong sounds like a nursery rhyme, and Human Shield is propulsive like a boogie. The rest is a confused hodge-podge of eccentric moves: Earl Blaize's creative electronic soundscape of Dead ln Motion, the thin wooden beat of We Kill Soap Scum, the electronic carousel of Conspiracy Of Myth, and the hyper-kinetic Ghostlawns.

Beans' solo album Tomorrow Right Now (2003), containing the single Phreek the Beat, adopted a more intellectual stance, further abstracting his spoken-word style and pinning it against intelligent instrumental hip-hop. Shock City Maverick (2004) is much more straightforward dance music (You're Dead Let's Disco, Papercut, Shock City Maverick, A Force of Edge, Death By Sophistication). Beans collaborated with jazz giants William Parker and Hamid Drake for Only (Thirsty Ear, 2006).

Beans' Thorns (Adored and Exploited, 2008) is more organic than its predecessor but also less vital, and End It All (2011) felt a bit obsolete in 2011.

Beans, High Priest, and M. Sayyid reformed the Anti-Pop Consortium for Fluorescent Black (Big Dada, 2009), their first album together in six years, that also featured producer Earl Blaize. The general course is the same inaugurated with Arrhythmia (2002), a "poppy" one (relatively speaking). Hence the emotional Born Electric and Volcano. There are still jarring experiments with beats and arrangements, notably New Jack Exterminator, Capricorn One and Lay Me Down, but that doesn't sound like it's the point anymore.