Sole And The Skyrider Band

Sole And The Skyrider Band

Remix Album

Black Canyon

Sole's his first major release not on Anticon Records is on his new imprint, Black Canyon Recordings. His new strategy shifts away from the pay-to-play politics of the past, inflated publicity budgets, and chart infiltration, and marks a return to his DIY guerilla roots. It re-ignites the culture war--a clarion call announcing the only role of art is to challenge the status quo.  What better way to celebrate such an occasion than a remix album with old and new friends? Featuring up-and-coming artists and indy stalwarts alike, the record has remixes by Dosh, Andrew Broder of Fog, Electric President, Astronautalis, Son Lux, Sleeper, Telephone Jim Jesus, Odd Nosdam, Thavius Beck, Subtitle, Bit Tuner, DJ Egadz, Otem Rellik, and Pictureplane.   This album departs from 2006's post-rock-influenced self-titled LP and revisits an IDM/electronic style. Song structures are destroyed, but the theme remains, whether it's Pictureplane calling for a return to '68, Dosh's re-emphasis of "to know thy enemy is to know thyself," or Son Lux recalling "everyone you know is on a tiny blue dot." In this rapidly changing world, these aren't empty songs of protest, love, or gluttony; they are calls to arms. Sole and the Skyrider Band go where no one else in hip-hop or indie rock dares. Strange days are upon us, yet there is no need to fear--the burning plastic smell can't last forever...

Sole And The Skyrider Band

S/t

Anticon

Though Sole’s last album, Live From Rome, came out only two and a half years ago, and Sole has been busy in the meantime, recently releasing a solo instrumental LP under the moniker mansbestfriend, and twice touring the US and Europe, he nonetheless refers to the self-titled Sole & Skyrider record as a “comeback.”   In some ways, Sole & Skyrider is a record of return—a return to rhyming, for one, particularly the complicated rhyme schemes that marked Sole’s early work, a return driven by his seemingly, but not actually, discordant love of both Lord Byron and Li’l Wayne. It also represents a return to the musical consistency and coherence that made the Alias-produced Selling Live Water a critical triumph. It is also, though, more than a mere return. Even before he’d finished Live From Rome, Sole had become disenchanted with the process by which he’d been making music: get a beat, spit a rap, mix it down. Fortunately, a series of events led him into the arms of Skyrider. The Orlando three-piece soon relocated to Flagstaff, Arizona, where Sole’s been living since his return from abroad, and all of a sudden, music-making became a warmer, richer thing. And you can hear it in the music: these songs feel lived-in, composed but not cold or calculated, and fierce yet not angsty.  The improvisational songwriting process produced a musicality new to Sole’s discography, and also furnished a number of stunning juxtapositions. The lovely analog of “Shipwreckers” (where Sole jacks...