Review Summary: Impossible Nothing? more like impossible to complete
Although he is destined to remain largely unknown, American producer and multimedia artist
Darwin Frost is responsible for one of the most intriguing and mysterious hip hop projects in recent years.
Impossible Nothing was formed in 2010 with the aim to create radical music in the underexplored style of fully sampled instrumental hip hop. The official project debut was released in 2016 and marks the beginning of the larger than life
-nomicon series. Clocking in at exactly 4 hours and 20 minutes,
"Phonemenomicon" is a collection of 26 mind-bending songs (each 10 minutes long!) that set a new standard for progressive hip hop. With an overwhelming length like this you might expect something gimmicky and robotic. But remarkably, every song has something to distinguish it from the rest.
Throughout this adventure, a carousel of genres and styles are intertwined. Hip hop is crossed with glitch, edm, ambient, video game music, film scores, classical piano, sound collage, soul, jazz and much more. These sound sources are sometimes contorted so much that it's difficult to recognise any point of origin at all. Take "S" as an example, hypnotic dance rhythms are accompanied by ghostly electronic
hissesss and transformative piano loops. It makes a major shift in the second half, where glitchy rhythms are enhanced by a sound collage of uncanny bell chimes, distant drums, incomprehensible speech and intercepting radiowaves.
Every song is capable of leaving you dumbfounded as they induce a range of inexpressible moods. The opener "A" is the perfect invitation into the world of this project. A thick fog of strings paint a longing atmosphere with increasing intensity. This segues into a perfect release of tension, a genius reconstruction of a joyful
Sigur Ros sample.
"B" may be the most accessible song on the album, but it's also one of the best. A relentlessly hard hitting, kaleidoscopic masterpiece. The glitchy "X" opens with a flute that recalls the nostalgia music of
Boards of Canada. A Klezmer clarinet even makes a fitting appearance in the second half. "K" features one the greatest re-works of metroid music to date. "D" is a storming mix of Jazz, glitchy cowbell and pokemon film music. "M" juxtaposes video game bleeps with tumbling drums, afrobeat and ethnic flute. "T" is plunderphonics bliss that appears as though an infinite number of new voices are added to a whirlpool of vocal samples. "R" is anther highlight of the album. A sequencing tour de force from one ingenious idea to the next.
Frost's
"maximalist" approach of recontextualization hints at three of his greatest musical inspirations: DJ Shadow, John Zorn and David Shea. He has perhaps made the only album (along with the famous first of
The Avalanches) that reinvigorated the model of Endtroducing.
He had 25 years of experience producing beats before this album dropped. I don't doubt that for a second.
