Reducer is the proper debut album from mysterious North Carolina-based producer Hanz following several online releases and mixtapes. The artist constructs bumpy, blown-out beat collages which are grounded in the production styles of golden age rap producers such as the Bomb Squad, but pull inspiration (and samples) from post-punk, industrial, and dancehall reggae. The entire album is disconcerting and occasionally punishing, but not quite in the same way as the grime-influenced sound terrorism of Hanz's Tri Angle labelmates ...
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Reducer is the proper debut album from mysterious North Carolina-based producer Hanz following several online releases and mixtapes. The artist constructs bumpy, blown-out beat collages which are grounded in the production styles of golden age rap producers such as the Bomb Squad, but pull inspiration (and samples) from post-punk, industrial, and dancehall reggae. The entire album is disconcerting and occasionally punishing, but not quite in the same way as the grime-influenced sound terrorism of Hanz's Tri Angle labelmates Sd Laika and Rabit. Instead, his music inhabits the same disturbed spaces as '90s underground hip-hop at its darkest and most abstract. The disconnected illbient transmissions of the WordSound label come to mind on tracks like the dubby, ragga-fied "Dues," which pastes eerie pianos and dreamy harps over a slow, lurching beat, making good use of stereo panning effects. He turns fluttering bird wings and chirping crickets into musical elements, and some of the electronic sounds and effects seem to approximate breaking glass or doors crashing shut. A lot of his samples are jarring and sudden; "Rust" cobbles together a few unrelated drum beats, and Mark E. Smith appears to be cut off in mid-sentence a few times, over a grubby punk bassline and blasts of sooty wind. The slightly more playful, uptempo "Count" similarly chucks in a snippet of Kleenex/LiLiPUT's "Ain't You" (but not enough for the singers to complete the titular line of the song, "Ain't you wanna get it on?") and a thumping beat over sparse pianos and haunting string samples. Perhaps the deadliest track is "Sink," which opens with noises that stab like broken bottles before launching into an ominous bass guitar beat and a head-spinning array of crashing sounds, as well as a lone shiny keyboard note that seems to be plucked from a sterile smooth jazz-playing waiting room. As discordant as the album sounds on paper, he shapes all of this rubble into a cohesive listen, albeit one that might require listeners to brace themselves for sudden dynamic shifts, and possibly nightmares. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi
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