Bookworm: The Hidden Staircase
(12" Maxi Single, CD Promo)
| 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. |
filler
song since i met you DEATHMETALBBOY to the sea filler song untitled one since i met you (alive at fake cake) since i met you (yao's kiribati adjstmnt) since i met you (dj enso bounce remix) since i met you (roche 7five remix) |
"Bookworm’s
new EP, The Hidden Staircase gives the collector set something
to hold on to, only to discover that getting a grip is nearly
impossible: The Hidden Staircase covers such a wide-open field
of styles: dipping in and out of, but never submitting to, shades
of jazz, electro-acoustic composition, dusty breakbeat driven
epics that any attempt at placing it in any kind of style ghetto
is thwarted. On The Hidden Staircase, Bookworm doesn’t take
disparate styles and butt them up together for novelties sake
so much as bounce blissfully from neighborhood to neighborhood
while the ghost of disembodied hip-hop stalks right behind him.
It’s that mixture of menace and beauty that is one the defining
elements of the EP: a cricket-chirp of Apehxian melody is submerged
into leagues of sub-bass echo; a dusty jazz break is broken apart
and reconstituted as a Sublime Frequencies head-bobber; the tremolo
melody of a long forgotten guitar magazine compilation switch
and bait with a clipped Björk vocal for a wrenching flamenco-dub
that starts dirty and ends up astral.
Recorded in bedrooms and art galleries up and down California,
The Hidden Staircase suggests an alternate history where West-Coast
noise isolationists and shattered hippies found solace and inspiration
in the Stones Throw bomb shelter; beats and patterns were tightly
wound in the studio, and then sun-glazed and psychedelized on
the deserted beaches of Big Sur. The Hidden Staircase’s
amalgam of psych and hip-hop, urban and rural, hips and head belies
a childlike disregard for parts that ‘belong’ together
and a deep understanding that all music is rooted in the spark
of experimentation and the thrill of the unknown. The record is
that rare beast (like the Yeti) which grooves and sticks in the
head in subtle and unexpected ways. Bookworm, like Kanye and My
Bloody Valentine, understands that ‘pop’, 'hip-hop',
and ‘experimental’ are not mutually exclusive, but
vital forces pulling at each other: The Hidden Staircase.
