There's nothing like a good groove. The feeling it exhumes on the human body is entrancing and soothing as the groove washes over your inner rhythm. Grooves can make you dance, sway, and overall chill out after a long, hard day in the grind. There's not much that beats a night time blunt to the dome with some grooving bass as welcomed company. One of the great aspects of Audible Mainframe's debut
Framework is its excellent use of groove and relaxed jazzy melodies to give one of the most calming effects a modern hip-hop album can resonate.
While most of todays hip-hop can be attributed to one or more ungodly dance clubs being overrun by idiots,
Framework passes by the bull*** like a speeding missile. Much like their contemporaries The Roots, Audible uses a live band to instill hip-hop music the way it should sound: f*****g
chill. Everything about
Framework from its sexy guitar melodies to stereo thumping beats calls for reposition. Lyrically, you won't find anything groundbreaking here; social problems, political injustices and street life cloak
Framework like many hip-hop albums today. The flow is rather sufficient, however; MC Exposition tells his tale of life in the new millenium with endowment and force, supporting the backing music like a hurricane to a wind chime. It is clear from the onset
Framework is an album made from the heart, not from the wallet.
"Das Kapital" starts things off refreshingly enough with the sound of waves giving away to a classic beat and spacey funk that immediately showcases the aesthetic of
Framework. Every so often
Framework will sprinkle in a change of pace that only a 7 piece band can perform that can at times give off a progressive feel yet doesn't take away from the core strengths of the album. "Figure It Out" mixes Audible's groovy punches with trumpets and keyboards to create something that has been done before yet comes off entirely fresh and original.
The albums true highlight is "Digital Cafe". Using a haunting piano and various effects, Exposition kills it with lines like
you haven't gone far from your original planet/your body has grown but your mind hasn't expanded. The entire song follows suit simulating a futuristic ghetto and is quite possibly one of the better hip-hop songs of the last decade.
Framework is enjoyable, groovy, funky, unpredictable, and thoroughly relaxing. Using the foundation of artists before their time, Audible Mainframe have created a modern hip-hop album for the masses that relies on soul and feeling rather than what is going to sell records. For this fact alone I highly praise
Framework. It doesn't hurt that the music is fabulous either.
