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El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead

It's been a few years since El-P unleashed his last monstrosity, Fantastic Damage, onto the world. It's nice to see that, in what is relatively quite a long time, none of El-P's misanthropy has been compromised. Make no mistake, I'll Sleep When You're Dead is a jarring, irate record. Aided by a misfit collection of guests: Aesop Rock, Cage, Cat Power, The Mars Volta and Trent Reznor, plus some additional backing vocals from several other notable figures, I'll Sleep When You're Dead is, too, ambitious in scope, stitching together a vast array of clashing sounds. And therein lies the genius of both this record and El-P: the production. El-P's beats are a spectacular mess, so mind-bogglingly removed from the typical kick-kick-snare, that they leave you feeling a little off-kilter, trying to find some semblance of pattern or consonance.

I'll Sleep When You're Dead is also, on par with the music, quite lyrically dense, mixing three parts paranoia to two schizophrenia. Naturally, El-P's typical bragging and self-aggrandisement is in no short supply here. And, just as naturally, it's hard to begrudge the man when it's quite clear that his hyperbole is backed by some of the best production and rapping in the game.

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Mr. Lif - Mo' Mega

El-P handles production on eight of the eleven tracks, with Mr. Lif producing two and Nick Toth producing the last.

OK, so, the first three songs are good but I'm starting to feel a little odd about how this record is progressing. It's turn for "The Fries," now, and the breakdown and segue into another beat is surprisingly refreshing, a little too refreshing... I wonder why? By the time we get to "Take, Hold, Fire!" however, which, given the guests (Aesop Rock & El-P) should have been a monster track, things are starting to get a little stale, and things are also starting to make sense. It's not that the music is bad, it isn't; it's that, simply, there's been too much of the same thing. In fact, I'd say that "Take, Hold, Fire!" does exactly what El-P was trying to do with this record best: the heavy beats, the stuttering funk, the dirty music, etc, but, being that it's the fifth song, it has lost a lot of its impact.

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The Dreamers at Bondi Open Air Cinema - Bondi Beach Pavilion - 03/02/05

Bondi Beach. Sand envelopes the entire place. Pot plants, inside the lifts, the counter top. Hell, even the showers scatter the grains of sand across the floor. Damn sand is everywhere. Lizette Montepelier knows of this observation's existence from a train and bus ride away. Daylight is unkind toward the Bondi Pavilion on Campbell Drive. Seat colours take up a lot of the ugly. Arriving with enough lead time, the cinemagoers find their mingling taking place on the balcony behind and in front of the pavilion. A paradox of locational streams.

Behind pale blue eyes a French accent shoots from the lips of a girl with frizzy hair and a sweater with one shoulder. Affecting this steely glare of loopiness, her voice is distant and her directions a little misleading. Vague gestures direct the feet straight into the turtle room; wherein dancers are dancing socks amast across the floorboards. Doubling back, the popcorn stand is where the purple banding action lies. This is where the food also resides.

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Mr. Lif - Enters the Colossus

I bought this EP on the same day that I bought the Stereolab album. The person who sold me this CD was black.

There are eight songs in toto, including the obligatory hidden track, and the EP lasts about 31 minutes. Insight, paWl, Fakts One, Lif and El-P take care of the production duties, providing freewheeling — if in fact I can once again use terms like 'freewheeling' — old school beats.

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I Phantom

I like hip hop. I hate skits.

Lord, do I hate skits. There is nothing worse than the flow of the album being interrupted by a pointless, moronic skit.

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