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Avg: 4.0 (64 ratings)
- Date Released: July 31, 2007
- Genre: Hip-Hop/R&B
- Style: Hip-Hop
- Label: Stones Throw
Donuts with hummus, anyone?
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We Say...
Think of it as Donuts gone global: a cross-cultural polymorph that fires '70s psych and grimy funk through a ten-ton bouzouki.
The Dr. behind the decks has had a bit of a fitful career. After an adequate but unremarkable debut, Oh No issued Exodus into Unheard Rhythms, a whalloping piece of turntable funk that sliced up and reconfigured the crazy rhythms of '60s soundtrack composer Galt McDermot. The resulting record was light years beyond its predecessor, suggesting Oh No works best when he confines his beatmaking to specific parameters.
He continues to concentrate and refine on Oxperiment, this time applying his calculated collage work to the music of the Mediterranean. Oh No (who's known to his parents and his brother Madlib as — no kidding — Michael Jackson) splices together snippets from Italian soundtracks, Greek go-go, Anatolian funk and endless international obscurities with a kind of giddy irreverence. The results are invigorating, a breakbeat masterpiece that plays out like the soundtrack to a lost Sergio Leone space epic. Oxperiment comes crashing to life with "Heavy," a steady-fizzing confection that pits a delirious corkscrewing vocal against a grease-fried guitar riff, looping them over and over again to create a kind of firm insistence. It's these kind of beats — the rigid and relentless — Oh No does best; he laces a snake-charmer horn line through the march-time rat-a-tat of "Exp Out the Ox" and throws a kemenche into fits over the thundering backbeat in the justly-named "Action."
The trick to Oxperiment is that Oh No basically treats all of his source material like Western R&B, isolating the breaks and forcing them to collide against themselves over and over again for maximum effect. And though the record glides from one sixty-second song to another, it never feels like anything less than a perfectly-realized whole. It's going to wreak havoc on your monthly download allotment, but it's worth it — Oxperiment is masterfully constructed, another sure-footed leap forward for a producer who's just now beginning to figure out his strengths. -
They Say...
Following in the tradition of other notable producers, Oh No flexes his talent on his third solo release, the beat record Dr. No's Oxperiment. Inspired by and sampled from Turkish, Lebanese, Italian, and Greek psychedelic rock, the album is much more melodic and full-sounding than anything Madlib might do, but Oh No's always been more tune-driven, and less concerned with jolty, sparse beats (though that kind of thing occasionally makes its way here) than his brother, and so looking for Beat Konducta Jr. material here would be a misguided approach. Dr. No's Oxperiment ends up sounding a lot more like a DJ Shadow or RJD2 album than something by Dilla or the Alchemist, the 28 tracks (all of which are under two minutes) working together to complete the whole, a kind of warm, nearly-poppy, guitar-filled trip into Middle Eastern chants, tight bass grooves, and drums that hover beneath the surface. That's one of Oh No's greatest talents, in fact: his ability to mix the different elements of his compositions so that none of them stick out too much but are all completely present, important and perceptible. The kick, the snare, are both there, are keeping the tracks in line, but unless an overt attempt is made to pick them out, they blend so cleanly into the strings, the keys, the vocal samples, that they're sometimes hard to hear. And unlike his brother, Oh No is not afraid of major keys and poppy chord progressions, even occasionally venturing into something that's vaguely catchy, and not just the avant-garde left-field modal wanderings that so dominate Madlib's beats. It's not that Oh No is a less advanced producer than his brother, it's just that he focuses on different things: inclusion instead of obscurity, harmony instead of atonality. Dr. No's Oxperiment is a beat album, that much is sure, but it's more than that, it's more than music for the obsessed crate digger. It's rich and vibrant, like a marketplace, crates of oranges and nuts and olives sitting in the shade, the sound of vendors hacking their wares, everything necessary to the proceedings around it, a perfectly orchestrated expedition into an exotic landscape that somehow, at the same time, feels very, very familiar, all of which makes the record an exciting and very satisfying listen.
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| 01. |  |
Heavy |
1:54 |
|
| 02. | |
Gladius |
1:22 |
|
| 03. | |
Higher |
1:33 |
|
| 04. | |
Breakout |
1:25 |
|
| 05. | |
Ox Broil |
1:52 |
|
| 06. | |
Bouncers |
1:36 |
|
| 07. | |
Alarmsss |
1:25 |
|
| 08. | |
Banger |
1:31 |
|
| 09. | |
No Guest List |
1:20 |
|
| 10. | |
Land Mine |
1:29 |
|
| 11. | |
My Luck |
1:45 |
|
| 12. | |
Cosmos |
1:49 |
|
| 13. | |
Exp Out The Ox |
1:01 |
|
| 14. | |
Emergency |
1:42 |
|
| 15. | |
Ohhhhhh |
1:00 |
|
| 16. | |
Deliveries |
1:07 |
|
| 17. | |
Come Back |
1:05 |
|
| 18. | |
Hot Fire |
1:35 |
|
| 19. | |
Action |
1:38 |
|
| 20. | |
Ghetto |
1:30 |
|
| 21. | |
Fast Gamble |
1:05 |
|
| 22. | |
All Over |
0:49 |
|
| 23. | |
Mad Piano |
1:33 |
|
| 24. | |
Oxcity Sickness |
1:45 |
|
| 25. | |
Cassette |
1:43 |
|
| 26. |
Down Under |
0:38 |
|
|
| 27. | |
Smokey Winds |
1:21 |
|
| 28. | |
Slow Down |
1:13 |
|
28 Total Tracks, 39:46 Total Length
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