ANTI-POP CONSORTIUM – FLOURESCENT BLACK (Big Dada)

 

Nov. 12, 2009 by Mac

After an absence of more than five years, Anti-Pop Consortium is back and returning to a landscape changed and charged by much of the sonic discord they laid the groundwork for. Their reunion album Fluorescent Black shines like a dark, flawed gem.

First off, let’s establish that APC (HighPriest, Beans, M.Sayyid, EarlBlaize) is a hip hop group and not a group of rappers. Their DJ is a member of the group, not an after thought. Their productions and arrangements are constructed for the group concept. There are no mail order beats or hordes of special guests. The collaboration is between the members of APC. When was the last time you heard ensemble rapping in the Furious Five or Soul Sonic Force vein? Dig out a Freestyle Fellowship cd, maybe… The Soul Sonic Force similarities run deeper, in the “Mc popping” word exchange and the electro informed production that APC has always pushed. The Black Eyed Peas, Common, and Diddy with Felix The Housekat have recently taken trips down the same path… the world is catching up.

The album starts off with a paranoid fury reminiscent of the Mars Volta (“Lay Me Down”) that sets the dark, uneasy tone of the album and leads into the compressed anxiety of “New Jack Exterminator.” The false bravado of the art world runs head on into hip hop swagger on the murder/suicide vignette “Shine”. While “C Thru U” would fit into any glitch set, the rapping throughout the album is dense in a way that has all but disappeared in the auto tune era. Except for the single ”Volcano”, the bouncy “NY-Tokyo” with sole guest Roots Manuva and the electropop-rock of “Born Electric” there is a darkness that only the group Dälek can match in what is classified as hip hop.

So is the return of APC triumphant? Will they get to shine in the electro-briteness of the post Kanye/Cudi world? With “Fluorescent Black,” probably not. Not with the way they make the familiar uncomfortable. But like the myth of Sisyphus, the triumph is in the struggle; in rolling the stone back up the mountain. APC for the win.