Blockhead
The Music Scene

THE REVIEW

I am often surprised by hip pop, a genre that is literally dominating the current music scene, so much so that I find myself asking, what is hip pop and what isn't hip pop now? Blockhead answers me with “The Music Scene,” an album released in 2009 under Ninja Tune, a well-known British electronic music label.

Let's move on to the introductions: Blockhead is James Tony Simon, a New York-based producer with a primarily underground fame, and a child of the arts. From his first productions, James Simon has always been fascinated by the more soulful and musical side of hip hop: this aspect, in particular, is greatly reflected in his fourth album “The Music Scene” and represents a strength. But it’s not the only characteristic of this latest production: in fact, the use of the Live sequencer by Ableton allows Blockhead to facilitate the creative process and approach music just like a painter approaches their canvas, mixing rhythms and influences like colors on a palette. The 12 tracks of the album can be seen as an enormous sonic portrait of the musical landscape that surrounds us, hence the world we live in, and each of them is at the same time like a landscape, a viewpoint of its own. We dive into listening with “It's Raining Cloud,” and immediately a jungle down-tempo caressed by ethnic instruments reaches the ear, which abruptly accelerates at the end. Next is “The Music Scene,” the most representative piece of the album's style: I challenge you to define exactly which genre this track belongs to, as it ranges from world music to trip hop. Certainly, the more funk influences dominate in “Only Sequences Change” and “Tricky Turtle,” but the quantity of instruments, clips, and sounds that break in (with great taste) exonerate any kind of categorization even in this case. “Which One Of You Jerks Drank My Arnold Palmer” instead possesses a really strong flow, and here we are very much in Gorillaz style. Finally, I point out the oriental groove of “Attack the Doctor” and the expertly constructed beat of “Farewell Spaceman,” the last track of the album.

Conclusions: “The Music Scene” represents a window on the vast musical and cultural melting pot in which we are immersed every day. If the starting point is a hip pop, the endpoint is not easily definable except through the expression “mature hip pop.” Overlooking the use of some samples and loops, it must be noted that the album is entirely instrumental and perhaps the inclusion of a warm and engaging voice would have made some of the tracks even more irresistible. But despite this minor gap, “The Music Scene” is certainly a unique and never repetitive work, a testament to the immense potential that new musical technologies can offer artists.