Jeez. Where do you start with this one? Subtle is one of those loose, ad-hoc, scrambled, brainteaser collectives you tend to get in hip-hop circles with the added confusion of having a nasally, high-pitched, polyrhythmic, white rapping beat-poet by way of leader, called Doseone (real name Adam Drucker) who pulls together all manner of re-sampled, de-sampled beat psychedelia and high-end improvisation into a densely layered, multi-faceted, Wayne Coyne-meets-Danger Mouse collage of queer urban narratives and Alice In Wonderland horseplay that makes Jay-Z’s ‘Black Album’ and Outkast’s ‘Speakerbox/Love Below’ seem positively one-dimensional. Yes it’s crazy. Yes it absorbs influences, agendas and matrices as adequately as a cyber-sponge. And yes, it’s rather like setting books like ‘The Catcher In The Rye’, ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest’ and ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ to the Yes’s ‘Tales Of A Topographic Ocean’ as rethought by MF Doom. It occupies a space that it is someplace and noplace. Kick-over drum-kits, squealing rock guitars, three-dozen samplers, Flaming Lips vocals, Personal Computers, DIY sound effects, buzzing synths and disturbed, psychic beat adventures. It’s like aliens have taken over the asylum and yet tracks like ‘Middleclass Stomp’, ‘Middleclass Kill’ and ‘Midas Gutz’ are – for all their wacko obscurity – so effortlessly satisfying.
Other Doseone projects include, cLOUDDEAD, Boom Bip, Themselves, Greenthink, Deep Puddle Dynamics, and though by no means the product of one man, ‘For Hero: For Fool’ is certainly the sound of one man’s groovy madness.
One of the coolest, cleverest albums of the year.