Arrhythmia

Anti-Pop Consortium | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 2, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Warp Records
• ASIN: B000063513
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #249,996 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #66 in Music > Indie Music > Rap & Hip-Hop > East Coast

Track Listings

1. Contraption

2. Bubblz

3. Ping Pong

4. Dead In Motion

5. Mega

6. Silver Heat

7. EKG

8. Ghostlawns

9. We Kill Soap Scum

10. Traum

11. Tron Man Speaks

12. Focused

13. Conspiracy Of Myth

14. Human Sheild

15. Place The Face

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

While most rappers prize money, women, and some convoluted version of "street cred" above all, Anti-Pop Consortium's Beans, Sayyid, and Priest immerse themselves entirely in the joys of language, spitting staggeringly complex monologues in a riot of free-association poetry. "I'm now worthy of the grace / My face graces Jupiter's lakes," they stutter on the excellent "Bubblz" as dislocated bongo drums gasp and stammer around them. The production is out there: "Ping-Pong" loops the snap of a bouncing Ping-Pong ball, while the digital static of "Mega" segues an opera singer's heavenly scales into the trumpet of jungle beasts. Arrythmia is occasionally a difficult prospect--you may want to scream out for a simplistic Puffy brag or a funky Neptunes hook to take a breather from this never-ending torrent of ideas. Still, it's a mind-bending success that seeks nothing less than to deconstruct and rebuild the discipline of hip-hop from the ground up. --Louis Pattison

From URB Magazine

Where so much hip-hop has fallen into a rut disguised as a groove - you know, the boom-bip, the saggy jig, the third-gen lyrical knockoff - Antipop Consortium's three MCs - Ball Beans, High Priest and M. Sayyid - throw on some waffle-tread tires and bust out the all-wheel drive, riding roughshod over all who would bury hip-hop alive. Arrhythmia, their second full-length, is marked by Earl Blaize's heady productions: deep, springy funk, born of ultrasound rayguns and stutter-punk percussion, not tired breaks and re-tread samples. Nothing is linear and nothing predictable. You've got your quavering opera singer. You've got your bucephalous bouncing ping-pong ball. You've got thick, oozing, mudslide bass and melted-circuit keyboards and Blaize's insect-beneath-the-skin paranoid soundscapes.

And don't forget their post-slam poetics, spun this way and that with crazy-straw flow. "We kill soap scum! " they cry, and they're right - their fast 'n' furious spray puts a newfound shine on a genre crusted over with complacency. Sonic fuckery alternates with bona fide songs like "Ghost Lawn," which sounds like Joy Division vs. the Tom Tom Club at the Nuyorican Poets Café. It'd be positively catchy, if it weren't so darn slippery.

This is some paradigm-shifting, sanction-lifting, player-grifting, top-shelf shit. The only misstep is "EKG," an instrumental glide through glistening tones and doe-eyed bass melodies: At only 12 bars and 30 seconds long, it proves APC to be not only brilliant producers but shameless sonic teases, doling out just enough to get you hooked - and keep you coming back for more.

Philip Sherburne

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FlexingComplexTextures, July 28, 2002

By 

"maxheaddrone" (Charlotte, N.C. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Arrhythmia (Audio CD)

O.K.== Heads are obviously aurally unprepared for this release in the present time
>>Maybe your kids will rock it in 2027<<
The 4 artists working here(three MCees)all produce the beats adding plenty of variation on the styles. There's solo songs, tag teams, group anthems and Moogsynth infected instr-mentals. Their sounds incorporate a number of old school drum machines and analog saws and sweeps, even some samples here and there. But to say they are just talking over the beat shows lack of concentration. They create unpredictable patterns, they make beats out of water droplets, robo-voices, shopping carts slamming into each other, they defy what is expected from the mainstream, and they get an A+ shelving in my Hiphop collection!

---->Listen to the 'Ping Pong(the Return)' sample>
M.Saayid says "My symphonic monopoly philosophy/sloppily etches notes akwardly/a quater to three/brass amp with a gas lamp/white wig slang Wolfgang/English chamber orchestrating a deadly banger/cliffhanger"--->> If that don't Bang your Brain your cord's unplugged.... Or you don't like avant-hop/anti-pop.
Not that 'Ping Pong' is the best track on the album, just the most exemplary of the samples given here. My favorites are 'Dead in Motion','Ghostlawns' and 'Focused'.
On 'The Conspiracy of Myth' I hear a Fellowship/Blowed style funk influence (Aceyalone was a past guest on 'Tragic Epilogue').There may be slight signs of influences ranging from Kool Kieth to The RZA, from Mikah Nine to Nine inch Nails, from Can to Deep Purple, from Brian Eno to Isao Tomita...you get the shot.
Buy 'em while they're not hot(the masses will eventually catch on...I think....) It's good the Warp label picked 'em up, because its already very difficult to get a hold of a few of their earlier releases, like 'Shopping Carts Crashing' (Japan Only CD) still available here on Amazon.Com, for a limited time I'm sure. Get a piece of the future of Hip Hop, before it becomes a classic piece of the past(They'll find this one on Mars, with vocals personally translated by the Consortium themselves).

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some dope Hip-Hop..........., June 4, 2003

By 

"cloud13x" (Trinity, Alabama United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Arrhythmia (Audio CD)

OK, I am deffintely into underground Hip-Hop and this disc has reinforced my interest into the "funkadelic" unknown. I heard about this trippin triad from a friend with similar interests to my own, and went to this website to check them out. I listened to samples of the first couple tracks and i was hooked. I bought the cd from this website and was totally pshyced to have it. I listened to it and was just as impressed as I had expected. The cd is full of crazy sounds and beats, but has plenty of orginality that gives this disc true uniqueness and style. If you are a fan of groups like Digable Planets, Binary Star, Self-Scientific, and Kool Keith, you should deffinitely check these guys out!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tronman and more..., November 17, 2009

By 

Xtian Thomas "MusickLvr" - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Arrhythmia (Audio CD)

this album... someone called them Public Enemy without the political stuff. Pretty much... doesn't do them justice. They went so much further on this one than the one before (Radiohead asked them to open for them) and it still didn't exhaust their creative juices - although it DID take them about 7 years to break up, get back together and make a follow-up. Listen to a couple of the samples to see if their energy is right for you - they're not for everyone. But if something says "pick it up", listen already. I'm trying to give a conceptual review because there's so many different sounds on this album that I honestly don't know where to start. It kicks off with a GREAT one and just gets better. *gush gush gush* I know, but they put this one out on WARP records. WARP does electronic acts - one of my friends at work described this album as guys rapping over IDM and that pretty much sums it up.

If that's something you appreciate, pick it up.

I have a soft spot in my heart for them - I loaned the previous album (Tragic Epilogue) to two different people and had to make a point of wanting it back. this one is better.

be careful where you play it though - the day I first got this, I went from the record shop to work and played it there... the poor girl I was scheduled with that day and I got into a most inappropriate fight while people were coming by and getting coffee. the grudge lasted all day. she was really cute, but I thought she was lazy. she thought I was too much of a hard@$$, but she never made... see? it's a loaded album for me. even now.

there are energies in this album, though, because the music wasn't tainted for me even with the drama of that day. it's just that good.

I'd go into a track by track listing, but there's no point. it's an experience. kind of like trying to go into all the reasons you're with the one you're with - no point in breaking it down because the whole is greater than the sum of the parts... but the parts are REALLY good. did I mention they make a beat by bouncing a ping pong ball?

if you put this on between Li'l Jon and Li'l Wayne at a party, God help you.
if you put this on at the wrong time of day, brace yourself.
if you put this on in headphones, you'll have a huge s-eating grin for the duration, but no one will really understand why.

they have a new album out, called Fluorescent Black, but this is the one where things got more interesting. they decided not to make a flow throughout the album and their music was better for it. the only flow is disruption - but what else would you expect of an album called Arrhythmia?