Sole And The Skyrider Band

Sole And The Skyrider Band

[2.5/5]


“You can’t be 30 and still making hip-hop/You can’t kill God with a slingshot.” So opines Sole, the man as responsible as anyone for making underground beats accommodate abstract Beat poetry. But perhaps the verse above-and this disc as a whole-represents a mid-career crisis of sorts; even though he’s rhyming again, the co-founder of underground label anticon. has largely traded backing boom-bap for the murky dubscapes of Florida’s Skyrider Band. The pairing provides Sole Tortoise-like oases of calm, an effective platform for his cut-up-style sociopolitical observations on “Ghost, Assassinating Other Ghosts” and “Nothing Is Free.” However, the frequent reduction of his verses to just another instrument in the cascading mix is a step sideways, driving any deeper meaning straight into the ether with the rippling echoes. (ANTICON) Dan LeRoy