Monday, August 31

WHY? and Themselves Team Up for New Song: "Canada"

Themselves, the duo of Doseone and Jel, have teamed up with WHY?, whose main man Yoni Wolf was a member of seminal Anticon group cLOUDDEAD with Doseone, to bring us the song "Canada".

"Canada" was recorded for a possible compilation that hasn't been released; the vibe recalls WHY?'s Alopecia, as do lyrics like "You're showing your pinkest parts in my absence". Both Themselves and WHY? have new albums on the way later this year: CrownsDown and Eskimo Snow, respectively.

Stream and/or download "Canada" below.

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Friday, August 7

Doseone Talks Collabs With Tunde and Mike Patton, Alan Moore, More

Also, Themselves reunion and new 13 & God album Doseone Talks Collabs With Tunde and Mike Patton, Alan Moore, More

Art-rap veteran Doseone is pretty busy these days. Earlier this year, he reformed Themselves, the group that he and MC/producer Jel started before forming the prog-rap band Subtle. Themselves released the guest-heavy theFREEhoudini mixtape earlier this year and toured a bit, including a stop at SXSW. On October 30, Anticon will release CrownsDown, the first official Themselves full length since 2002's The No Music.

Meanwhile, Dose also put together the Nevermen, a triple-headed supergroup with TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe and avant-rock mogul Mike Patton. They have signed to Lex for the release of their debut album. And along with Fog's Andrew Broder, Dose composed the score for Unearthing, a forthcoming graphic novel from comic book legend Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta). He's also planning another album from 13 & God, the collaborative supergroup that teams Themselves with the Notwist. And he's been teaching a freestyle rapping class in Oakland.

Earlier this week, Pitchfork spoke with Dose about all the irons he's got in the fire. Check it out below.

Pitchfork: You've been working on a supergroup with Tunde Adebimpe and Mike Patton. Are we finally going to get to hear that soon?

Doseone: Yeah, dude. We have actually named it; it's going to be called the Nevermen. The reason we couldn't really explore it all is we were looking for the missing member or members. What we wanted it to be the whole time was three frontmen, which fell quickly and easily into place. We've been working on music the whole time, and we're going to do the finishing giant powwow in September. It's all frontmen, no other musicians whatsoever on any of it. The extra members are the Chapman brothers, who are probably my favorite artists alive today, I have to say. They are part of the YBA [Young British Artists movement], or associated with it, and they were at the top of my list.

When we started this idea, we wanted it to be three frontmen and an artist to do the artwork, to sort of be the Professor Griff of aesthetics-- you know, the guy who has his arms crossed and a beret on and doesn't say much, but everything looks the way he deems it to be. So we had a really long list, and we didn't know how we were actually going to get in touch with any of these people that we didn't know. When you actually delve out of the music world-- maybe we could drop a line to Björk and say hi-- actually getting in touch with artists that we've never met and I've only seen in glossy books proved to be quite difficult. And so we finally, through a small string of miracles, got in touch with the Chapman Brothers. So they're in, and that'll be our group.

We're going to make and finish the record. It may be out this winter, but I am reserving the right to change that. Mike and I have been in a lot of groups. Tunde's been in a few, but this is one of his first freestanding things. One of the things that I've really learned and really want to bring to this group is that there's no rushing the music. I won't have it anymore, ever again. We've taken our time and had all these amazing sessions together, and I think that it's stuck. It's really growing in a certain way that's completely unique. It sounds like a band's first record, but also sounds like three rock stars together at last.

I'm trying to have it so it's like the whole record is a three-headed dragon. There's no, like, Mike Patton song with me and Tunde beatboxing, you know what I mean? I guess the best way to put it is I really want it to be a true composite of what we all do best. Completely succinct, continuous, cool rhyming poems with everyone's voices and melody talents, and Chapman brothers making it look right. And then there's a few other secrets about the actual mode in which we're going release it and some other cool stuff which we're still figuring out, so I don't want to blurt those out just yet.

Pitchfork: How did the three of you decide to work together in the first place?

D: Mike and I met through Southern Distribution, which was our distributor, a while ago in the United Kingdom. I would go there and steal all his records before I met him. They'd be like, "Hey Dose, you want any records?" And I would steal all the Kranky albums and all the Mike Patton shit. Eventually, they somehow mentioned Themselves, and then he got in touch with Jel to work on Peeping Tom. This is a dog's age ago now, a really long time ago. We met and just completely hit it off right away.

Then a good friend of mine in Baton Rouge, a promoter at this really great club the Spanish Moon, had TV On The Radio there. My friend just connected us. Tunde and I talked once and were, like, grade school friends. It was pretty fucking uncanny: same comics, same everything. Too much in common, from the age bracket on out.

The dots connected themselves beyond that. Mike and I instantly wanted to record together and make something that really allows us to push each other, as did Tunde and I. I found that when we did 13 & God, there was something about adding people that were so just, you know, tied in and built into the system. They release records, they are their own entity and energy onstage. Combining those really did double the effect of the art. Not only on myself as an artist, changing my aesthetic, but I could tell just for people when they saw the shows or heard the records, it's just an exponential increase how interesting it is. It's also nice to have it just be the three of us-- no band members, no politics, no bullshit. You'd think it might be the most difficult thing in the world to get three frontmen to be in one group. But we all get to just do what we do best.

Pitchfork: Have you been to any of the Faith No More reunion shows?

D: Dude, they're all in Europe! So, no. But I wanna go. It's great. I can't believe Mike's doing it, man. I mean, I'm just now having songs that are that old for me, you know what I mean? And he's back doing them again and it's like returning to his first... What am I talking about? I'm doing the exact same thing [with Themselves] right now! That's weird. I didn't even think about that. Holy shit! I'll be damned! So here we are in our first incarnations. But he's having a blast. He says it's really mellow. The joy of it is that they don't have a record or a release regime hounding them. So they just do shows, cut loose, do the next show. But I'm into it, man. I saw Skid Row open for Aerosmith once, but I never got to see Faith No More.

Pitchfork: Faith No More was my first show, opening for Guns N' Roses and Metallica.

D: You're shitting me!

Pitchfork: No. I was 12. It was great.

D: [laughs] That's so dope, man! You know, here's a good story for you. One of the first rap shows I ever went to was LL Cool J on the Mama Said Knock You Out tour. My dad got tickets to this nice theater in Harlem. I was in Jersey at the time, so I take the train out to meet my dad in line at the show. I'm waiting for my dad, and I'm in all Raiders gear, head-to-toe, like triple fat goose, bubble goose, Raider hat over my eyes. This is when I was the only white person at the show, too; the turnouts were different back in the day. And then I'm sitting there, I'm the only white kid with all the Raiders gear on, 12 or 13. And my dad walks up in a fucking dashiki. It was never like, "I'm going to dress black." But man, I don't know what was going through his ex-hippie head. But it was awesome. He walked up in the dashiki, and my shit turned green. I just fucking nearly fainted. We still laugh at that one at the dinner table. Family outing.

Pitchfork: Tell us about the work you're doing with Alan Moore.

D: That is kinda the coolest fucking thing in the world, I have to say. It's funny; he may cringe when he hears this, but I didn't realize 'til I saw the Watchmen movie what a profound effect some of the character-writing that he did there had on my young, forming superego and self and perception. Rorschach himself-- I'm actually this kind of artist. I'm just completely uncompromising with respect to a certain higher, moral criterion. I'll play a blender on a fucking million-dollar demo, but I won't say certain things for the wrong reasons. I get very caught up in what shouldn't be done with the space, with the time that I can free to create some songs.

But moreover than that, like, it's just really interesting to be able to contribute to something that Alan Moore made when he, like, is completely amongst the first seeds to get sown in my head that are worthwhile and slightly timeless. The first seeds of creativity in my head were fucking "Silverhawks" and "Voltron" and shit so, I mean, there's no referencing that on a daily basis, you know? I will form like Voltron occasionally, but in general, no.

This book is called Unearthing, and it started as a collaboration between him and Mitch Jenkins, an old compatriot of his who is a photographer and who does really brilliant work. They wanted to do a graphic novel that is photo-art and novel. And this is more novel than graphic at this point.

Pitchfork: Is it done comic-style?

D: No, that's the thing. "Graphic novel", in this case, is completely misleading. Like "rap record" with Themselves. It's actually more a novel. Mitch did all the photos, and so it will be more like a giant coffee table book than anything else. But the writing itself is extremely dense. It's a prose-based novel, and it's too confusing for me to try and correctly encapsulate. But it is about, uh, a co-worker of Alan's and somehow seemingly about Alan himself. And it's about the comic industry, the world of magic, the world we live in, the world we don't live in. Really fantastic writing.
[Fog's] Andrew Broder, my best friend for many years now, he and I also finally get to do a record together. We get to score Unearthing, so it's now become this big, organic sort of collaboration between the four of us. We basically did two hours of reading when we first got it, and it's extremely dense. I remember the first time I read it, I was like, "What the fuck! Should I just beatbox now?" I didn't know what the fuck to do with myself. But as we listened to it, it's full of recurring themes, and all this recurring writing breaks and reconstructs its phrasings over and over again throughout. So we kinda found those motifs, brought them all in and out, and then made holes in it, where we made things recur and then patched the holes.

And then, thanks to you guys saying that Mike Patton was doing the soundtrack, we had to ask Mike to be on it. No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. But I think you guys wrote a story about it.

Pitchfork: Well, Billboard reported it and then retracted it...

D: Right, right. Always fun. We were going to have Mike on it anyway, but it was nice. It was cute. You got me and Mike laughing over it. And because it's such a long-form piece, there's tons of room to embellish, and it's also very minimal at times. So we're having some of our favorite artists come over and add to it. So we have Zach Hill, Tony Conrad, Mike Patton, and Justin [Broadrick] from Jesu. Aside from Patton, it's all people new to our collaborative circle. Alan Moore's a metal fan, so we tried to do that justice and bring it all in.

It was really challenging to get to the middle phases of work on Unearthing because I'm so used to working on a three-minute song. You put in twelve hours, and you press play at the end of the day and you got some shit to show for yourself. You're like, "Oh! That thing sounds better!" But with a three-hour piece, you're just like, "Oh my god, the whole... the beginning... the middle..." But now that we got through giving it its flesh, it's really sounding great. So we're going to be putting that to bed this winter as well. We have to wait on that for the publishing-world book scheduling, it's like every 90th Tuesday. [laughs] It's kinda all Greek to me at this point.

Andrew and I were always talking about a record. And when the opportunity came along, I was like, "We gotta do this." I really kind of put my creative foot down about how cool of a thing this is. You know, it's like when I got the chance to meet Mikah 9, I fucking stepped up and freestyled with him. And if I get the chance to make art with Alan Moore, I'm going to step up and score something two hours long, even though I've never really done that before.

Pitchfork: Have you had any personal interaction with Alan Moore?

D: No, that's coming soon. I've seen some of the video he's filmed of the whole reading. I imagine at some point, man, I'll be at a pub, having a fucking beer with Alan Moore, both of us wearing rings. I'm into it, dude. I'm just gonna be a listening motherfucker. I'm one loudmouth guy that is gonna shut the fuck up around him. I really can't wait. It's pretty cool energy to be around. And hopefully, if all goes well and everything feels good and is going positively, off into the future we'll get him to go on the road a bit and do some readings or excerpts and play live with him, which would be the ultimate fucking ideal thing that I would love to do. I'll have my first stroke onstage with Broder and Moore any day.

Pitchfork: I understand you're also working on another 13 & God record.

D: Yes, more secrets in the brick oven. When we, Themselves, were on the No Music Tour with Dax [Pierson, Subtle keyboardist] as a trio, I was a huge Hood fan. WHY? and I had just cameoed on [the Hood album] Cold House, and I played Cold House for Dax. Dax was like, "You gotta hear the Notwist, dude." Neon Golden comes out two weeks later, and we're rehearsing with Themselves. He puts it on after our rehearsal. And I'm such a shithead; when something good comes on, I just keep asking what it is. He's like, "This is the Notwist!", and I was like, "Oh my god!" All we listened to on the No Music tour was pretty much Neon Golden.

We go to Germany for the European leg of that tour. We go to Munich, and we have this awesome promoter who cooks us a huge meal. We're talking, and we say, "Hey man, do you know the Notwist, aren't they from Munich?" And he's like, "Yeah, Markus is coming to the show tonight." And we're like "That's cool. Markus?" And he's like, "The singer from the Notwist." We met, and again, like meeting Tunde, it was like little kids who were separated at birth. We were just embraced and the rest was completely magnetism.

The first 13 & God started as demos that we had left over that we sent back and forth and then worked on together for a period of weeks as a group. Then when we played those live on tour, we became a band. That was what we always wanted to evolve into. So in January, our German brethren are flying out here. Dax can no longer travel across the Atlantic, and we are going to record with Jordan [Dalrymple] from Subtle, who entered the band to take Dax's place live. We are going to record here in a space and make it all from scratch and record it as a band. Then we'll do our overdubbing in our home studio, go back to Germany for a finishing session, and in 2010 there will be a brand new shiny 13 & G record out in the world.

Pitchfork: Moving on to Themselves, what made you decide to do the group again after doing Subtle for so long?

D: Well, there's no simple answer. The same evolution that led to Subtle led back out of it. When we were Themselves, playing as three people with Dax, there was a strong pull amongst us. We were feeling more and more like a band. Themselves started as me and Jel, and then Dax came to give us flesh live because we didn't really know how to play our samplers yet. Everything was just gray and green all over. Dax joined in, and it started to really become something. But we always felt that because Dax never wrote any of Themselves' records that we were playing together, there was something slightly askew. So he knew all these other musicians, and we became Subtle following our togetherness as this new version of Themselves. We had a blast making all that art.

Then there is just sort of a natural tow back to Jeff [Jel] and I making rap together again. This is all underscored by me teaching this freestyle class in downtown Oakland, which kinda came out of the blue. You know how some people just find themselves going to church again? That's what this rap class was for me. It was like, "Awww man! Rap!" And then it opened it up in a realistic way, instead of, like, "Shit, those ten rap songs have been due for ten years! We better turn 'em in!"

Pitchfork: You put out theFREEhoudini mixtape earlier this year, and it features, like, every rapper you've ever worked with. And then the album, CrownsDown-- correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no guests on it at all.

D: Correct. That was kind of the thing. Jeff and I have actually been casually talking about the execution of these two albums for fucking six years, which is really a luxury. So if you take a time machine back, we were sitting there at some point and we were like, "I don't know, man, do we do a big-ass posse cut for the last song on the record?" These things were always there because the whole point of these records was to really focus and draw out of ourselves what rap imprinted and imposed upon us-- all of these heuristics and rules, things we will always do and will never do on songs. We try to really draw them out and make records that reflect them and are of them.

So theFREEHoudini is-- you actually said it exactly the way that we thought of it-- anyone I ever shared closeness with on the mic was called. Lionesque was my favorite because she's been working in Ohio in a bank, raising her son for all these years. I fuckin' emailed her out of the blue and was like, "Wassup, girl? You wanna be on this record?" And she killed it. Absolutely my favorite verse. Aesop's been making records twice a year for, you know, the last eight years, and Lionesque just comes with it and hangs with everybody from Aes to Sole. It was really cool. The whole point of that was to really let theFREEHoudini be this giant proverbial four-track that we mailed around.

And then to let CrownsDown really just be a Gang Starr record, which was always one way. It's executed production. Each song fully explores the color that it is, whether it's a heavy song, a somber song, whatever it would be production-wise. And then the only guests that are on there are extremely site-specific. The love song on the record is about Dax, and on that we have everyone who lost him as a group member on a regular basis, which is Markus and Jordan and myself. We're all singing on the end. And then there's a few tiny, little guests tucked away. We couldn't keep people completely off of it. We did our best. Really, we wanted to focus. One of the problems of having talented, cool, open-minded friends that you love making music with is keeping them off your fucking records, man. It's hard. You do hear shit, and a lot of times Jeff and I will play something and, we don't even work with someone like Dosh a lot, but we'll play something on the Wurlitzer and be like, "Dosh line! Should we call Dosh? No. Don't call Dosh, let's just do it ourselves." I think that there's something to that, but with these records, it was really about letting the one be this total Fangoria of collaboration and people stopping by for 18 bars and then leaving. And then the record itself is meant to be two strong legs-- two young, old men having at it.

Pitchfork: You mentioned that you're teaching a freestyle class. How did that come about?

D: Oh, man. This woman I was dating was like, "Hey, I have a friend. He runs a program for inner city kids who are into rap and making music." When I was young, I would go to these every once in a while, where people would come talk to us in Jersey, and it was always really wack and stiff, so I was hesitant. I went in anyway, and I started talking. These kids learn how to use Reason and make beats. They use ProTools. They record. I talk to them, and they're totally jonesing for everything I have to tell them about rap battling and all this stuff. I finish, and they're like, "OK Dose, you've got to get out of here because we got freestyle class." And I was like, "The what? With the who? Excuse me? Where?"

I stayed for freestyle class, and me and the instructor hit it off. So I've been teaching it with him for a long time now, almost two years. And I tell you what, dude; it's completely the light in my life. Everything else in my life is centered dramatically and specifically around music or bringing some fraction of rent in. And then working with these kids is pretty unique in my life. It's a raw energy. There's no parenting, and I'm teaching freestyle. It's not like I have to teach them penmanship or anything. There's zero disciplining. We only use rap names in class. I just get to show them how to get open, really, and then every once in a while I have endearing moments with them, talking about the ancient ways of 90s rap.

This is why I love doing a rap record right now. I go to these kids, and I preach. Well, I don't preach, but I talk to them about freestyling completely, no writtens, all these ethics and tenets that I osmose from early 90s rap. But none of it has held true. There's no static example by which I might illustrate everything I'm trying to explain with my voice. I can't be like, "Look at Lil Wayne! Now there's a man's man!"

They show me the same sort of mainstream rapper on YouTube. Like, I'll show them someone like Smoothe da Hustler or some shit, and they'll be like, "All right, check this out!" And it's Lil Wayne again. [laughs] It's really interesting. So I get to see what they're into, and now I have a whole new batch of kids a lot more open. The cool thing about them is they respond instantaneously to any dope rap that I play them, whether it's from '88 or '95; it does cut the mustard. It's kind of interesting to see.

Pitchfork: So they're showing you more Wayne than Gucci?

D: Dude, they don't listen to that, OK? They like Young Cheese Man. They listen to little Young Jeezy. They bag on Soulja Boy when they freestyle. He's like the new MC Hammer, you know? Like, he's just too obviously weak, or something, for them to even conceive of as being a star. They listen to majority Lil Wayne. They do not like Asher Roth. They're not so into Eminem. It seems like maybe they were into him a couple records ago, but they don't talk about him. They like T.I. They don't really like Jay-Z out here; it's kinda interesting.

I have some of my kids, the young bucks, that are a little bit more into what would be considered hyphy, the actual traditional Oakland/Bay Area stuff. But Souls of Mischief and Latyrx, all of our Bay Area direct predecessors-- they've no concept of them. I played them Lateef last week, and my star pupil, D, started instantly doing Lateef's style. These kids, they fit it like a glove, somehow, without being as card-catalog-obsessed-- which is what I felt I was when I got into rap. It was the '90s, I was just like, "Woah! Shit I've never heard!" With these kids, it doesn't seem like the internet really strikes them as this treasure trove of history, but that doesn't change how quickly they can take to picking that all up and sponging it up. It's pretty dope.

Posted by Tom Breihan on August 7, 2009 at 11:40 a.m.

Tags: Doseone, The Nevermen, Collaboration, Tunde Adebimpe, Mike Patton, Book, Alan Moore, Andrew Broder, 13 & God, Subtle, Themselves, Reunion, Interview,

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Thursday, July 30

New Release: Themselves: CrownsDown

New Release: Themselves: <i>CrownsDown</i>

Artist: Themselves
Album: CrownsDown
Release Date: October 20
Label: Anticon

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Thursday, March 19

SXSW Wed: School of Seven Bells, Themselves, Ulrich Schnauss, Lovvers, Heartless Bastards

Photos by Tom Breihan; above: Heartless Bastards

Tom Breihan's SXSW Report: Thu | Fri | Sat
Ryan Dombal's SXSW Report: Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat
Amy Phillips' SXSW Report: Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat

Ulrich Schnauss [Elysium; 8 p.m.]
First things first: Big gas-face to whoever booked UK-based electro-shoegaze laptop guy Ulrich Schnauss for the 8 p.m. pole-position spot at a SXSW show. Because that, after all, is how you want your four-day beer-blast to start: Watching a guy twiddle knobs and push buttons on his laptop for an hour in a dank bar. It doesn't matter how achingly gorgeous the sounds coming out of that computer might be; this is not a good look.

Schnauss will always suffer in comparison to his closest contemporary, M83, since he doesn't have their pop intuition or sense of sweep. But at Elysium, he hid pretty little synth hooks under his crackling drums. His beats are more disco than M83, and there's some mechanistic J Dilla acid-trails funk in there, too. When two rock dudes with guitars ambled out for the lullaby "Shine", it somehow turned the show even more somnambulant than when it was just Schnauss and his laptop. But later on in the set, Schnauss' sound got clangier, and the two guitar guys came back to blast waves of staticky fuzz over the top. By the end, it was basically Detroit techno with distorted guitar whorls overtop. So yeah, this thing picked up.

Capsula [Habana Bar Backyard; 9 p.m.]
A last minute change in schedule meant that when I went to see NY up-and-comer Lissy Trullie at the Red 7 Patio, I ended up staring at some mariachi band instead. From a couple of blocks away, though, I heard something that sounded pretty right on. Turned out it was Capsula, a glammed-up power-trio from Spain playing to a mostly empty Habana Bar backyard. Capsula sounded alternately like straight-up scuzzy garage punk and like Death Valley 69-era Sonic Youth if Kim Gordon sang all their stuff. Pretty good! And I definitely wouldn't have heard them if they weren't playing so loud.

Heartless Bastards [Stubb's; 10 p.m.]

On their phenomenal new The Mountain, Ohio rasp-rockers Heartless Bastards sound something like the unjustly forgotten 1990s blues-punk band Geraldine Fibbers if they decided to suddenly reunite and start sounding like Band of Horses, filtering their weathered snarl through the kind of expansive beauty that makes for a great road-trip soundtrack. Onstage at Stubb's, playing to a massive crowd there for the Decemberists, the band sounded even more assured and powerful. There's a country-punk grit to them that reminds me of Social Distortion, and it comes through stronger when you can see lead Bastard Erika Wennerstrom pushing her voice through hell.

Wennerstrom switches off between piano and guitar onstage, but it's her voice that makes her band something special. On the verses, it's a gnarled mutter, but when she hits those choruses, she turns it into a full-bore howl, one that I've already heard a few people compare to Janis Joplin. And then the band brings riffs that kick hard enough that I don't feel bad making Sabbath/Pentagram/Alice Cooper references. These are lean times for huge, sweeping, meat-and-potatoes trad-rock, but the Heartless Bastards do it exactly right.

Lovvers [Red 7 Patio; 11 p.m.]
It's easy to lump British tantrum-throwers Lovvers in with fellow v-abuser Wavves and the cresting wave of tape-hiss pop-noise lo-fi kids. But onstage at the Red 7 Patio, they sounded closer to uber-crude Crypt Records garage-rock. They play fast and sloppy, but they keep a pop-punk sense of abandon, careening around the stage and dipping into the crowd to sing in people's faces. They're not above slipping "Hey! Hey!" chants into the middle of their songs, and they finished their set with a falling-apart cover of the Buzzcocks' "What Do I Get", which made sense. They didn't bring anything as powerful as Heartless Bastards' grandeur, but they were a fun way to spend 20 minutes.

School of Seven Bells [Buffalo Billiards; 12 a.m.]
Here's what Brooklyn dream-poppers School of Seven Bells brought onstage with them: Two guitars, one keyboard, one chair covered in electronic whatsits. No drums. I figured this might be a problem. On!Air!Library!, the previous band from twin-sister singers Claudia and Alejandra Deheza, had some gorgeous moments, but they also tended to err on the formless side. But ex-Secret Machine Benjamin Curtis' drum machines sounded great, adding backbone to the tracks that isn't always there on Alpinisms, their debut. And the Deheza sisters didn't push their angelic harmonies into Cocteau Twin curlicues. They sang serenely but directly, lending an almost matter-of-fact tone to their voices. That forthright quality, combined with the glimmers of 80s synth-pop underlying their best songs, served the band well. They could rely on the otherworldly quality of the vocals, but they do something more difficult: They make catchy songs, which makes them an anomaly in the universe of whatever's passing for dream-pop these days.

Themselves [Mohawk; 1 a.m.]
I left School of Seven Bells a bit early so I could hike up to the Mohawk and catch one of the first sets from the reunited art-rap duo Themselves. When I got there, though, what I saw was Themselves' Anticon buddy Buck 65 wearing a cowboy shirt and rapping over Laid Back's creepy disco classic "White Horse". So, uh, that happened.

Themselves, the duo of Jel and Doseone, have been on hiatus for six years but they've been working together in the prog-pop/rap band Subtle that whole time. But evidently there's some serious pent-up demand for new Themselves material. They emerged to an absolutely rapturous reception, and a few drunks off to the side even spent the whole set dancing, not something I ever expected to see at an anticon show. (It was absolutely horrendous dancing, but still.)

The duo's new guest-heavy the FREEHoudini mixtape comes jammed with mysterious quicksilver sing-raps; it reminds me a bit of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. (A compliment!) Onstage, though, they're even weirder. Doseone (who has a mohawk now) raps so quickly that he can sound like a CD skipping, and it's basically impossible to understand almost any word that comes through his pinched cartoon-character bleat. It's truly impressive watching him pull this stuff off live and seeing Jel program his beats live, playing hypeman the whole time. But Dose lays that whole I'm-a-weirdo shtick on a little thick: throwing fake flowers everywhere, squinching up his face like Ernest P. Worrell, saying ridiculous stuff ("Tell major label rappers to quit, especially Murs") without elaborating. Themselves' off-kilter skronk isn't for everyone, but it definitely made a club full of slaphappy festival-goers happy tonight.

Posted by Tom Breihan on March 19, 2009 at 1:20 p.m.

Tags: School of Seven Bells, Themselves, Ulrich Schnauss, Lovvers, Heartless Bastards, Capsula

Friday, February 20

Themselves Return From Hiatus, Plan Free Mixtape

Indie rap: Still going! Themselves Return From Hiatus, Plan Free Mixtape

Photo by Matthew Scott

Expressionist backpack rap is back! Thus far this year, we've already heard pretty good new albums from the likes of D채lek and P.O.S. And now Themselves, the duo of Anticon Collective mainstays Jel and Doseone, plan to release a free online mixtape with a list of guests that looks like the bill at a circa-2001 Scribble Jam.

Lately, most of the virtual ink spilled on Anticon has focused on its recent toe-dips into songier (as opposed to rappier) fare, like the ever-more-melodic Why? or Subtle, the prog-leaning band that Jel and Doseone lead together. But early next month, Themselves will return from a six-year hiatus to release the FREEHoudini tape, which they'll post for free download on the internet sometime early next month. Among the guests: Aesop Rock, Slug, WHY?, Busdriver, Buck 65, and Sole.

The real question right now: Which guest will be able to cram the most syllables into one punchline? My money's on Busdriver. (Also: Where's Sage Francis?)

Themselves have also scheduled a few live shows. Their big return will go down at a February 28 Noise Pop party at San Francisco's Apple Store, where they'll take the stage alongside Why?'s Yoni Wolf. They'll also play SXSW and Coachella. And this August, they'll release their next official full-length, CrownsDown, on Anticon.

Posted by Tom Breihan on February 20, 2009 at 6 a.m.

Tags: Themselves, Tour, Album

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