Time Crisis Album Review: Conn hip-hop group releases debut to high marks

Hip-hop isn’t too often given to experimentation. Genre conventions shift slowly and artists move in packs – perhaps due to the collaborative nature of the music, ideas tend to crop up across the field all at the same time. A fresh approach is either embraced widely or ignored before it reaches any broad audience. You can imagine some studio employee holding the phone up to T-Pain’s monitors, calling Akon and exclaiming, “It’s your cousin! Marvin Kon! You know that sound you were looking for?”

That’s why first-timer duo Time Crisis’ debut stands out. A collaborative effort from Jon Markson ’12 and Will Brown ’11 with rappers and musicians from their Boston-based Fameless Fam collective, it is thirty-two minutes of dense textures that alternate between floating vibes and pounding beats, without a single moment of stasis. They’re not given to aping current trends or banking on the innovations of other artists guaranteeing them success. It’s not that they’re without their influences – just that their treatment of those influences recontextualizes and manipulates them to carefully curate the moods and emotional rhythms of their album in ways that are generally outside the scope of hip-hop producers.

A lot of the diversity of the album stems from the backgrounds of the members, both Conn students. Most notably, guitarist/singer Markson’s experience in nerdy indie with his former band Unique New York comes through strongly in the album’s frequent vocal harmonies, which owe more to American Football than to Nate Dogg. The intricate guitar work that recalls his Allentown scene-mates’ constant noodling.

On some tracks, the Sunny Day Real Estate tendencies can be a little too much, even for those of us still given to an emo afternoon or two, and for some listeners the singing might be a pretty serious turnoff. The chorus of “Pen to Paper” is powerful, for example, but the melody for the verse is aimless enough that the whining qualities of the delivery demand more attention.

Fortunately, there’s at least as much rapping. Fellow Fameless Fam member Virtue’s delivery is dynamic and interesting, and his flow, which recalls Blackalicious’ Gift of Gab as well as LA indie rappers like Subtitle and Busdriver, peppers the album with many of its best moments. His verse on “Blue Lips” cuts through the weight of the wasted atmosphere and slurry hook with engaging wordplay and confessional musings: “What’s the difference between co-dependency and addiction?” is an excellent line to drop into a relationship song this druggy.

The album’s biggest strength by far is the lush production. Every layer has room to breathe, yet the overall sound is perpetually full and gorgeously put-together. It’s more Pro Tools than studio, definitely, but the feel suits the material: the opening track lets a spoken word piece fade into a cut-up xylophone arrangement, like a poor man’s Phillip Glass. Ambient keys, understated percussive accents and abstract textures fill out the sound from start to finish, and that’s important: the album’s emphasis is definitely on the backing as the track itself rather than as support for the vocals, whether rapped or sung.

So when “Heaven’s” synthline kicks in, the thrill of the hook and the beat instantly grab the ear, a groove made of G-Funk swagger and stab sublimated into the postmodernism of today’s electroacoustic and synthy blog darlings. It’s the closest the album comes to straight hip-hop and it’s a good starting point. By the denouement of closer “Resolve,” the album’s covered some serious musical ground. Taking cues from Portishead’s triphop and the avant-garde approach of Anticon’s roster, Time Crisis treats the history of hip-hop as a suggestion box rather than a manual. Top 40 it ain’t, but for a first album it’s an accomplished and confident attempt at broadening horizons and giving a historically flat genre a shot of the experimental.