Blockhead 'Music by Cavelight' (Ninja Tune)

New York-based producer Blockhead uses hip-hop to recreate the vanished art of storytelling on his debut album. The downbeat breaks and moody samples cruise along city streets catching glimpses of stories and lives from the shadows of the night and recounting them in this smooth late-night soundtrack.

The stunning opener ‘Insomniac Olympics’ is a gently rousing call to midnight arms that explores a world of digitized tribal chants and haunting melodies. The cavelight becomes the orange glow of streetlights reflecting off the inside of the window of a passing car, while the stories are told in the balletic string arrangements of ‘Road Rage Breakdown’ or the errie scratching of ‘You’ve Got Maelstrom’. The epic synths and rolling drums of ‘Sunday Séance’ are tempered by a lonesome harmonica that serves as a reminder of more rural times, as if being trapped in the wavering light and shadow of urban life awakens ancient memories of past lives. These are contemporary musical narratives with their alienated and ambiguous outlines of events and people.

For all its post-modern views there is a real emotional depth to ‘Music By Cavelight’. The centerpiece of the album is the three-part ‘Triptych’, which follows the glories of romance through the giddiness of love and onto the harsh finality of loss. Blockhead uses his classical influences to create warm string arrangements but uses the very modern technique of harmonizing by speeding up or slowing down his vocal samples. He builds up an intricate web of sound using horns, pianos, distorted wind chimes and broken beats, piecing so many bits together with ease.

Too often this kind of downtempo hip-hop relies on being atmospheric or cinematic without ever probing its own surface. Blockhead has not only created a moody film soundtrack but the music is also a kind of grand story of love and despair. Cool and beautiful.

words: Colm Larkin

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