New Music: CKPITS & Dug w/ Sicksmith - So It Gose

 

 

As many of you know, UGF (or to be more specific the half of UGF that is me) is a huge supporter of Cleveland based rappers Dug and Happy Tooth. And they've been very cool to us as well. I believe it was in our first year that they sent us a humble little EP called All in Your Head which to this day has the most unusual time signatures of any rap I've ever heard. That album was great, and it was a real pleasure to get to speak with them about it, and really cool they wanted to let us in on it before the general public.

I'm not one to break tradition when it's as solid as this. So when Dug sent me his newest EP recently, a trippy little journey called So It Gose (I wonder if anyone's gonna tell him about the spelling error... ;-) ) performed with Minneapolis rapper CKPITS over beats by Hungary based Sicksmith asking for opinions I was overjoyed. I got a chance to listen to the whole thing on the way to work.

What we have here with So It Gose is one of the more interesting things I've heard in a while. Imagine a noise rap record with the goofy sensibilities of Aesop Rock curated by a pair of weirdos spitting syrupy stream of conscious ramblings. The album is abstract, but it also manages to offer up songs that are catchy, ear wormy and most definitely inspire head nodding.

The emcees are great, but I really want to give a shoutout here to producer Sicksmith for being the MVP on So It Gose. Their production has all the heavy plodding darkness of Moodie Black, but with (IMHO) frankly more interesting choices of instrumentation and more creative compositions overall. Sicksmith is one to watch, and their creations craft the character and atmosphere of the album perfectly.

All of the songs are at least fun, although (and here I need to reveal that I'm in my mid-30's so I really think autotune sounds like a nightmarish singing robot dropping out of the sky to murder good music) the autotune on "Wand in the Mist" is unnecessary and moderately annoying, as is 99.9% of all autotune ever.

This album is very very cool. I'm going to leave it at that, I'm not feeling so good today and just really, really really hoping it's not Covid so I can enjoy the upcoming long weekend.

Get So It Gose out September 7th on any of your favorite digital music providers, or be like me and only ever get anything from Bandcamp (Dug's is here). Thanks for reading!