BRE'R

Bathing in the Betterment of Cold Drink (03.09, Circle into Square)

For: Odd Nosdam, Belong, Guillermo Scott Herren

Byline: Bottomless soundscapes that skirt the edges of instrumental hip-hop, minimal electronica, and weird science.

Heading back to march for this one, but for very good reason. If I ever got enough motivation to create music I would pretty much want to sound like a carbon copy of BRE'R. BRE'R owns everything I love about outsider instrumental hip-hop, electronica, whatever. BRE'R lets his compositions roam, burrowing little niches of early anticon soundscapes of cLOUDEAD and Odd Nosdam, to the next door sounding left-field sampling of Belong, to the manual dexterity of genre mashing of Mr. Scott Herren. The looping instrumentation of strangely tuned and syncopated guitars on "Everyone Has One" and "Birf Crawl" display a forward thinking instrumental bleed over that reminiscent of 2009's best single "Quitters Raga" by Gold Panda. Bathing is a relatively short album, but the sheer number of musical ideas packed into these 27 minutes is overwhelming. Well, not overwhelming in the bad way, but in the sense where each track is bottomless, where the discoveries get weirder and weirder the further down you get. Watch the BBC's Blue Planet episode 2: The Deep and you will understand what I mean. If there is a line that divides instrumental hip-hop, weird minimal electronica, and buried drones and field recordings BRE'R inadvertently stepped over it on his haste to chase the next musical idea that presented itself in the distance. Another super solid release for Circle Into Square this year.

Ryan H.

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