Controller 7
Left Handed Straw

Controller 7? And who the hell is that? Many of you might be asking this question when reading the artist's name, the album title, and taking a look at the cover image, a sort of Dadaist collage whose main element is a balding man looking at us with a bizarre expression.

However, questions imply an answer, and soon enough we find out that the character in question is Tommy McMahon, a producer from San José, California, under the Anticon label. If you're wondering what Anticon is, it might be useful for you to know that it is one of the most important independent hip-hop labels, responsible, between the late nineties and the early new century, for a real “advancement” of the genre, achieved with a mix of avant-garde sounds, ultra-minimalist artwork, and an attitude far from rap stereotypes.

Back to us. In 2000, Left Handed Straw, the debut of Controller 7, sees the light, and it promises us that everything was created using only the left hand(!). If you're thinking of a madman in need of a committal order, listening to this record might confirm your doubts. We are indeed faced with thirty-seven tracks where rhymes are practically absent (exceptions are the remixes of “Candle” and “Rain Men” by Deep Puddle Dynamics and the "acrobatics" of Doseone in the suspended “Morality”). In such a melting pot, we find everything: instrumental pieces, phone conversations, delirious dialogues on a jazz backdrop, and, in addition, a series of “tests” with fragments of more or less (un)known tracks (highlighting the voice of Jacques Brel in the splendid “Les Marquises”).

If you think this jumble is the result of a madman's project, you can stop reading here. However, if you feel fascinated by the chaos of Left Handed Straw, my advice is to dive in to discover, if not a logic, at least a certain coherence.

In Controller 7's album, in fact, we easily move from abstract compositions (“Stane”, “The Forest”, or the magnificent “Imagination Cycle”, reminiscent of Boards of Canada) to others that are intense or even touching (the beautiful “Yellow”, with its strings accompanied by hip-hop drums that then veer towards drum and bass; the three parts of “Unknown”, where we find orchestrations and voices worthy of the best classical music), passing through moments quite distant from the traditional boom-bap (the syncopated rhythms of “Bunny Slippers” and “Impatience”, the suggestive breakbeat of “Over the Hill”), not forgetting the playful incursions into electro scattered here and there in the tracklist.

The glue to the chaos of Left Handed Straw is indeed good Tommy, or rather his humor, combined with a frantic musical search and an anarchic spirit, eager to push beyond the clichés that have too often discredited (and continue to discredit) the world of Double H.

This means that the "trick" played by Controller 7 seems to follow the trail already blazed by DJ Shadow in the masterpiece Endtroducing......, which is to say, a proposal that, while starting from typical beatmaking, distances itself and manages to be appreciated even by those who frequent that scene only marginally.

So come on, put the phone down, postpone the call to the psychiatric ward, and give a chance to Left Handed Straw. You won't be disappointed.

DeRecensore's Rating: 4.5