The ‘Cassette City‘ production folder [that now luckily lives on an external HD] takes upwards of 60 gigabytes of space; a testament to the number of earnest attempts, half-assed recordings, false-starts, and corny ideas there were during the somewhat arduous production process. I figured that some of these musical artifacts deserved to see the light of day, though. I mean, some of this stuff actually makes for an interesting listen. More after the jump…
Today, I’ve got a pretty complete musical thought for you. This track, titled, ‘The Age of Imagination’, was an early instrumental recording, in which I was clearly experimenting with chamber-pop ideas in a hip-hop context. So, we’ve got a shimmering string sample, some Burt-Bacharach-style horns, a piano glissando lifted from a Ferrante & Teicher record, and me doing some low-fi cuts on the decks. My man Ezra from ‘Vampire Weekend‘ put me onto the main sample for this piece way back in high school [can anyone pick out what it is?], and I think he actually used some part of it on a song by his old band ‘The Sophisticuffs‘. Maybe this is part of the reason I didn’t develop ‘The Age of Imagination’ further. I think what I took away from this ‘experiment’, though, was that if I was going to try and compose hip-hop through the lens of ’60s pop giants like Brian Wilson, David Axelrod, et. al., I should be wary of things sounding too ’90s… in a bad way. I mean, this track could fit comfortably on any one of those godawful ‘downbeat/lounge’ compilations that were en vogue during the latter part of that decade. Still, on its own, ‘The Age of Imagination‘ has some musical merit. Peep.
Download: The Age of Imagination
