Providing listeners with a wide pallet of laid back, dreamy and funked out goodies longtime DJ, producer, musician and Minnesota native Mike Swoop gives the world his debut album, the highly agreeable “New Love“.
Having honed his skills as a DJ for Twin Cities’ rhyme collective Diametrix, Swoop is rooted in Hip-Hop, but for his own album he definitely straddles genre lines in order to create the most heavenly loungin’ music I’ve heard in quite awhile. Containing elements from Dancehall, Dub-Step, Afro-Beat, Electronic and even Blues, Swoop cultivates magnetic arrangements that effortlessly get ya head groovin’. The basslines are thick and rolling, the instrumentation is crisp and sultry and every track has it’s own identity.
It’s hard not to relax ya’ self a lil’ when hearing infectious instrumentals like “Artisan”, “Spread It Thin” and “No Go Die”, that all have a host of progressions, and sport interesting synth and sample work. Really can’t say enough about this record’s alignment, there’s so many rich musical textures walking perfectly in unison here, an airy glow emits through the rhythyms that doesn’t wear off until the 49 minute experience is through. It’s definitely Kind of Hard to grasp that the creator of all this musical grandeur is all of 22 years old…
Keen not to forget about his Hip-Hop counterparts, Swoop does employ the efforts of several heady underground acts in the form of Toki Wright, Big Quarters, Allpurpose and Kavorkian. Much to my dismay the bulk of the emceeing doesn’t stack up to Swoop’s production, with perhaps Brother Ali hypeman Toki Wright providing the best compliments to Mike’s diverse orchestration, coming in just a neck ahead of the surprisingly well delivered effort from virtual unknowns Kavorkian and Allpurpose on “Where Do We Go”. Things wrap up in a polished manner with the sanguine “Up Late” and the slow winding “A Better Idea”. Combined they form a nice fastball, then change up conclusion to an engrossing album.
A very game debut effort indeed, Mike Swoop’s “New Love” suffers virtually no missteps and due to it’s outside the box sound might just register as one of the best Instrumental albums in 2010 in a couple of different genres.
-Dominick “BIG D O” Ledezma
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