Alphabets (Denver-based producer Colin Ward) dropped the mammoth Thru Tha Rip at the tail end of 2013 and I’m still jamming it in the middle of the year on the reg. The album’s 70+ minutes of battering polyrhythms, kinetic synth melodies, and chilly cyborg atmospheres lead me by the hand down spiral stairs into a subterranean bunker zone stocked with enough drum machines, patch cables, and Carlo Rossi to survive the gottdamnn apocalypse when it hits. I jam tracks like “NASTY FUTURE” and “LEMON SLICES IN MY CUP” and I wonder under exactly what conditions such future-tech bangers could have been conceptualized/programmed/created in the real and physical world in this, the year of our demonic overlord 2014.
The video for album centerpiece “RAPTOR JAZZ,” created by Ward and a posse of ninja collaborators on the roof of the impossibly fertile Denver DIY zone Rhinoceropolis, snuck onto the Tube last month. I watch it and I begin to understand exactly what we’re dealing with here, and let me tell it straight to your face that it’s something like anarchism. No rules on the roof. No faces on the roof. Dance the way you want to dance. Feel how you wanna, too. Fire some fireworks. If I were present for the filming of this video, I would have blended right the F into the proceedings and poured some wine all over the face and umbrella of a masked compatriot in the name of that one “Clever Girl” raptor that made sure that hunter dude got got in act 3 of JP1. Jam this, jam it again (optional), and pay what you want to grab Thru Tha Rip on Bandcamp (mandatory).
• Alphabets: http://alphabets.bandcamp.com
• Rhinoceropolis: http://on.fb.me/1rc8hRN
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