Future Stars and Small Wonders is an album you listen to with a finger on the rewind button, wanting to periodically re-listen to Arthur Arellanes’ lyrics and sample choices. At least, that's how I ingested it. Unlike other albums in the artsy hip-hop genre, Bizzart’s latest is not simply a composition that "washes over you" -- the record he describes as an “earbook” requires you to pay attention to each sample and have a response beyond nodding your head.
Consciously or not, Future Stars doesn’t hit a rhythmic stride until the last third of the record. This surprised me at first, considering the fresh drum programming that peppers almost every track; Arellanes certainly knows his way around the downbeat. Even “Future Girls,” a track that begins with two minutes of choppy but catchy beat construction, sounds more like an example of what the album didn’t want to be than a potential single. The bouncy but relatively conventional “Too Much Coffee Not Enough” sounds like a demo until you pay attention to the lyrics; a hook like “Roll this a little tighter/ Pass me a lighter/ And we’ll Rubik’s Cube this with one glove” is a wonderful example of the many levels that Bizzart's lyrics occupy. That particular hook is best read as a metaphor for the track’s construction: many hands in many places, constantly manipulating and assembling.
This musical manipulating that traces the seams of Future Stars is what really warrants multiple listens — not the compositions as pieces of genius songwriting. I’ve puzzled for a while over some of the more obtuse song structures on this record, and my guess is that Arellanes just thought some of the sounds sounded cool where they landed. This isn’t to say that the spoken samples, which line almost every track, aren’t thoughtful or meaningful in context; but I think the overall aesthetic of so many voices on one album serves a greater purpose than the meanings of the words themselves.
And really, this might be the best way to listen to Future Stars: as one long showcase of different voices in different dialects, drawing off of the material from Arellanes' old spoken-word career. In a similar way, this “performance” is reminiscent of narrative classics, like The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come for Free. The topics of hip-hop culture, artistic creation, and mental health are all present, but seem to fit in a larger and less concrete spectrum of disembodied sounds.
Ultimately, those who just want really “strange” sounds are better served looking elsewhere; in the experimental noise and sampling realms, there have been albums that offer much sharper juxtapositions. But Arellanes’ intuition, his affinity for the “almost groove,” the subtle shifts of formal expectations, and the breadth of voices, sounds, and misplaced signifiers on Future Stars make it worth a lot more attention than its 32-minute runtime.
1. Android Hearts
2. Changing Stars
3. Hookers and Bling
4. Back to My Planet
5. My Sister’s In Jail
6. Tuesday
7. Follow These Lines
8. Future Girls
9. Too Much Coffee Not Enough
10. Leaves My Eyes When I’m Not There
11. Marthur
12. Wood Is Whyte