Well, this week I wanted to do something a bit different than my traditional album reviews, and focus on a grassroots label I've recently discovered and fallen in love with. Empty Space Collective is a Swedish noise / drone / rap indie enterprise run by Joel Siméus (formerly of Milled Pavement) and 82 (fka åttatvå which, coincidentally, is Swedish for the number of years it would take me to pronounce that, and even more fka Plunge Attempt). You may be familiar with both of these musicians, Joel produced a large body of work for Decorative Stamp, one of my favorite hip hop labels to date and also released a few albums for Milled Pavement, another favorite (Country Pink for example is great, and features raps from Plunge Attempt and THMS who you may also be familiar with through his New Cocoon release entitled, ahem.. Glömda Egenskaper. Anyways...) before striking it out on his own. His solo work, most of which is available free, can be found here.
My first exposure to the music of Empty Space was an impulse buy of the MP (getting tired of typing these labels so I'm going with acronyms) self titled release Extendead Plunge Attempt. It had an exceptional list of guest features including members of Escape Artists, Ira Lee, Evak (of Work or his album with Edison) and the aforementioned THMS as Mr. T. DJ Extend's somber guitar laced production made for a fantastic canvas upon which Plunge Attempt painted his depressing and unconventional stream of consciousness raps. After thoroughly enjoying that album, I never heard much from Plunge again until I stumbled upon ESC's Bandcamp and started downloading left and right.
Working with Joel as the distortion and screech laced Amputee and Marcello Martins as the more melodic and somber Melancholic Tendencies, Plunge has been extremely busy but speaking to a fairly limited audience as far as I can tell. I feel like for the weirdos like myself who are looking for something a bit different this label is absolutely worth a look. From IHAA's Damien to San Diego's Tenshun; there's even some production from Pete Sasqwax (remember Ten Gallon Hat / Float Yer Kegs?) and Maki, ESC has a huge collection of both Swedish and English raps and production ranging from brutal to beautiful.
Treat yourself to something strange today, and support a label that's entirely funded by hard work and love of music here.
No comments:
Post a Comment