Seed to Sun

Chronique

Boom Bip, a Cincinnati producer/DJ (roughly in that order), comes from a long line of twisted hip-hop mentalists, stretching from Biz Markie to Company Flow to Kid Koala. And listeners expecting something special from an unknown granted a licensing to the quality-control experts at Warp won't be disappointed by Seed to Sun; it's experimental hip-hop being done on a level reached by few producers out there. More experimental, rangier, and lighter than any Co-Flow material, but more producer-driven than Kid Koala's records, the album encompasses analog electronics, beat-heavy experimental techno, turntablist scratching, and dozens of mostly unrecognizable samples (one strain that briefly emerges from the soup: B.J. Thomas' "Everybody's Out of Town"). Surprisingly, Seed to Sun is also very melodic, audible even when Boom Bip layers dense beats and samples over his tracks, as on "Closed Shoulders." For "The Unthinkable," one of the few vocal tracks, guest Buck 65 comes off like a countrified rapper produced by El-P. The other top-notch vocal comes from Dose One (from Anticon), prefacing a Cypress Hill-goes-pop chorus on "Mannequin Hand Trapdoor I Reminder" with some paranoid musings. Nothing against El-P; he's a great producer, and deserves most of the hype he's gotten. It's just that Seed to Sun does what he does so much better.
© John Bush /TiVo