New Album from Three Weeks Ago: Deadringer by RJD2

200th post! Yay!!!

You may or may not believe this, but Eric and I are friends on Facebook (shocking I know). So when Eric wrote his post on Ratatat last week, he included the following status to go with the link: “RATATAT is so fucking awesome, I don’t know why it took almost 200 posts to make one about them. Although this may be because Elliott doesn't do tracks of the moment.” Eric is right, I can assure you that if I did do track of the moments, Ratatat would get a lot of loving on the blog; I freaking love them. Something about the way their guitar and bass blend makes me think that their music is purely electronic and I think that is fantastic. 

Last summer I went on a major Ratatat bender. I listened to their entire discography almost non-stop (which is only 4 albums Eric, get your facts straight). It still wasn’t enough, so I used Pandora.com to make myself a Ratatat playlist to find similar stuff. One day a track came on that stuck with me, Ghostrider by Rjd2. I listened to the song non-stop; I was of my Ratatat bender.  It (somehow) acted as the transition to my Gorillaz bender (I really don’t know how I made that jump and yes I go on a lot of music benders). Though I never looked into Rjd2 more, he stuck in the back of my head. I knew that I would one day get the whole album.

Fast forward seven months and I am looking for an album to grab. Sometimes I just get stuck and have no idea what I want; nothing on my list of things to get looks appealing at that particular moment. I debated lying and writing on an album that I already knew and loved, claiming that I never heard it before. (I promise I won’t do that, it defeats the point of NA3WA). Then in my moment of indecision, my iPod’s shuffle landed on Ghostrider. My mind was made for me.

Deadringer took me a bit by surprise; given the way I discovered the album I was expecting more of an electronic album. However, the album is very much hip hop, specifically the DJ oriented variety (versus rapper oriented, though it does contain a decent deal of rap). In fact, I first listened to Deadringer with Eric in his apartment. When the album ended and I asked him what he thought and he said that it was “pretty much the definition of early 2000’s DJ hip hop”. Unfortunately I have little idea what I am saying when I talk about hip hop/rap (in case you can’t tell) because my knowledge on the genre is pretty much non-existent. So I must apologize in advanced for my limited perspective. I will probably talk more about the more Dj/sample oriented tracks seeing as that is what I am most interested. Now let’s get to the review.

At 67 minutes, Deadringer is long.  It has 18 songs that range from cool mixes of samples like The Horror to interesting raps like F.H.H, to more relaxed, trance-like stuff like The Proxy. Like all respectable hip-hop albums, the beats in Deadringer are varied and fascinating. Each song is interesting in its own way. That being said though, the length of the album serves to lessen the impact of each song’s creativity rather than strengthen it. The diverse array of things going on spread out over the course of an hour makes it hard to focus on the intricacies at play, especially towards the end. Sure this might be because I have a low attention span, but I think that is unlikely given that Shine on you Crazy Diamond (pts I-V) is one of my favorite songs. Length aside, the album has some really great tracks. The Horror being the first of them (and the intro to the album).

The Horror is awesome. It reminds me a great deal of the Avalanches with its layered samples and main melody (I think it’s a synth…). The sampling is well mixed and really creative and enjoyable. I looked up what songs are sampled and was very excited to see that the vocals came from the Twilight Zone. When I first heard The Horror at Steve’s place (before I listened to the whole album straight through with Eric), I instantly recognized the opening sound but could not place where it was from. I kept pestering Steve and Mark but both thought that it was an original sound. Well when I looked up the sampled songs I was proven right. The opener is from The New Scooby-Doo Movies theme song (listen to the last 10 seconds), otherwise known as the best way to start an album ever. Besides the excellent choices of samples, the song is put together really well and is super catchy.

The same could be said about many other sample focused songs on the album. Songs like Smoke & Mirrors and Good Times Roll, Pt. 2 are tight songs that are really enjoyable to listen to. The aforementioned (posted above) Ghostwriter is a complete joy and is probably the catchiest song I know that doesn’t have any lyrics. Shot in the Dark is not a particularly musical song but the sampled vocals are really interesting (I thought it was Fred Flintstone at first, unfortunately it isn’t). The songs that are rap orientated in the first half, F.H.H and Final Frontier, are pretty enjoyable. This compliment is an impressive feat seeing that is coming from someone who has only admitted to liking a couple of songs by Eminem and A Tribe Called Quest (I am working on developing my rap side).

That being said, the album switches dramatically somewhere halfway through it. The tight, catchy, active songs of the first half are mostly replaced by more laid back stuff. These works are not bad songs, they just feel unnecessary and different. The album is twice the length of a short LP; why not make it into two separate works? Or how about split it into an LP and an EP? These could have easily been done and I feel that both works would have been better off for it. The result of the non-split is an album that is very easy to pick up and start, but hard to listen to all the way through. I would say that you would be better off picking the songs that you like individually, but at an immense length of 18 songs, it is really worth it to pick up the whole album for a couple extra bucks (assuming you use iTunes).