Just like the producers she’s writing on, Paris-based writer, Madeleine Byrne seeks out artists, forgotten, overlooked or not given the attention they deserve to work out their particular brand of magic and express it in words.
Grown Up Rap is happy to announce we’ll be publishing some of her writing on hip-hop – past and present – as part of an occasional series of articles, starting with Damu the Fudgemunk’s The High Light Zone, the 12-minute plus instrumental from the Washington DC, Redefinition Records owner’s album he likened to watching a movie, Vignettes.
We’re huge fans of Damu at Grown Up Rap (read our interview with him and Jason Moore, aka Raw Poetic, here) – a sentiment more than shared by Madeleine as you’ll see.
The High Light Zone by Damu the Fudgemunk (Vignettes, Redefinition Records, 2017). First published at https://www.madeleinebyrne.com/ July 01, 2017.
Extravagant, outlandish claim alert: this track, The High Light Zone from DC-based producer, Damu the Fudgemunk’s two-hour opus, Vignettes might be one of the best pieces of music, Madeleine Byrne writes, in any genre released in 2017.
If you think of hip-hop production as the assemblage of sonic elements, where the skill comes via the construction and use of contrast, Damu the Fudgemunk’s The High Light Zone goes against such easy categorisation. This music sounds like its flying, pure movement – to stop, start, stop and start again. And has a stunning drum sound, a killer beat.
When researching this piece, I had one key question to answer, one puzzle to solve: was this music sample-based, live instrumentation, a mix of both? I contacted Redefinition Records – the label co-founded by Damu the Fudgemunk (the artist known to his classical musician parents as Earl Davis). I asked my friends; one thought it’d be sample-based, another said the opposite, or that it was made up of live instrumentation sampled and spliced and found a clip posted on Twitter by the flutist, Seb Zillner as back-up for his hunch that showed him recording a part for the record’s track Solitary Refinement.
But then my trying to ‘work it out’ runs counter against the experience of listening to this music, which encapsulates such energy that it leaves you feeling transcendent, perhaps even breathless at times because of the essential swing of it, the kick of it. And it is this energy that sets it apart.
Many contemporary hip-hop instrumentals mine a similar territory, it often seems to me. Whether they are following the classic prototype set down by the great masters from the 90s, or burrowing into the super-soft fractured melody-driven style so popular today, you can recognise a formula: start with a dramatic, or mood-setting vocal sample (a comedic skit, or something from the news, the voice of a famous artist to set the theme of the music) and combine three, or so elements that appear/re-appear at set intervals. There is nothing wrong with following conventions, but sometimes it can feel a bit stale.
The High Light Zone starts with a sample, but the overall effect of the music is closer to a live jazz performance, or poppy electronic music from the 80s, say the extended remixes, or live performances of English groups, such as New Order – not so much for the sound, but the music’s essential exuberance.
What makes The High Light Zone so interesting though is that even if it might seem to be closer to other genres of music – the duration could be that of a live jazz band performance, the snazzy feel could come direct from disco – the hip-hop foundations are plain to see, mainly via the way Damu the Fudgemunk exposes the beat and then allows the music to stop completely at times.
The final two minutes of the piece where one instrument/or one part comes forward and the others recede: this resembles jazz, but whereas the expectation within that genre would be for a musician to let loose with some kind of solo, or improvisation, it’s controlled/contained. Here we find the direct point of continuum with the hip-hop aesthetic.
This has always been something that has appealed to me in hip-hop production, the way the manipulation of the various elements thwarts our expectations and desires, via the refusal of development and release; the various parts begin, then stop, or are repeated over and over. It’s a kind of anti-music, in essence, punk almost.
This music by 9th Wonder, Let me Talk – released, I think in 2011 – offers up an extreme version of this tendency, aggressively cutting it back at points leaving total silence when you expect the music to build towards its conclusion.
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Paris writer Madeleine Byrne’s interviews and articles on hip-hop have been published at The Wire Magazine, Passion of the Weiss, Okayplayer.com, Ambrosia for Heads and here at Grown Up Rap – we published her interview with Nolan the Ninja earlier this year. Check out her site, madeleinebyrne.com to read more.