Black Canyon

Sole & Dj Pain 1

Death Drive

Black Canyon

Death Drive is a collision of two distinct worlds: the scorched-earth-of-indie-rap legend Sole and the concrete jungles of certified platinum producer DJ Pain 1. Combining modern pop / rap aesthetics with a political edge reminiscent of hip-hop classics like Fear of a Black Planet, the duo employs the golden era hip-hop approach of a rapper and DJ without resorting to gimmicks or clichés typical of more formulaic two-turntables-and-a-mic unions. Cross-pollination between mainstream music and the underground has been happening for years, but anything that bubbles up is always devoid of substance; Death Drive is a political rap album that eschews the rapper persona of savior / prophet and speaks from the riot line. In a period of human history where critical music is absent from the airwaves, this is true resistance music. Sole is the founder of Anticon Records, the first collectively owned indie hop hop label in the United States. He has released ten full-length albums and performed over a thousand shows throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East and Japan. Sole’s activism reaches beyond the studio and stage into his everyday life where he is deeply involved in many projects that engage directly in the class struggle.  Known for his 2008 breakout beat on “Don’t Do It” for Young Jeezy’s platinum-selling album The Recession, producer DJ Pain 1 stays busy. He tours as a DJ, produces full albums and creates original and free content for the producer community. Pain 1 co-founded the first hip hop performing arts program ...

Sole

Crimes Against Totality

Black Canyon

Crimes Against Totality is the final release in Sole’s Ruthless Criticism trilogy. Initiated last year, the series has since reaffirmed his place as “experimental rap pioneer,” breaking new ground among leftist zines, radical blogs and activist-minded people everywhere. Critics and fans heralded previous installments No Wising Up and Ruthless as some the artist’s greatest work to date; “a poetic blend of critical theory and experimental club beats.”  Crimes Against Totality is a collection of songs from the Ruthless Criticism sessions that have been locked away deep in e-vaults and are now released to the world to fight the class war on their own. The dozen tracks feature production from Man Mantis, Thavius Beck, Egadz, Skyrider, Crushcon7, Fanesha Fabre and Hollagramz.

Whitenoise

No More Dystopias

Black Canyon

***WHITENOISE is SOLE’s new one-man band and the follow-up instrumental project to his critically acclaimed 2007 release on anticon records, Poly.Sci.187. The name was lifted from a Don Delillo novel, about how real fear and imagined fear endangers our society. It’s an exploration of un-quantized analog 8-track walls of noise combined with the hip-hop "beat" aesthetic. The tracks are songs sole has been fine-tuning for years that eventually became so full that there was no room for vocals.  WHITENOISE harvests samples from a wide range of source material including; 80’s pop, David Harvey, Robocop, McKenzie Wark, Anderson Cooper, David Graeber, vintage sci-fi TV, Iraqi Mujahideen videos, Ronald Wright, and more. This project is a humble attempt to illustrate ways "instrumental music" can provide an apt canvas to reflect on "critical" sentiment in song form in a far less heavy-handed way then a rap song. In a review for sole's first instrumental album Pitchfork dubbed him "the D.J. Shadow for the Huffington Post set." If the former was true then, then WHITENOISE is the Pete Rock of toxic airborne events.  The first single/video, “Fallujah” and “The Military Entertainment Complex” is a sonic look back on what has been dubbed the most violent and brutal moment of the Iraq Occupation. The “Military Entertainment Complex” is the symbiosis of Hollywood, video games and war. It has become the ultimate recruiting tool and mode of blurring real violence from the virtual. The video that accompanies the song features mash-ups of Disney Marches & White Phosphorous Bombardment,...

Sole

No Wising Up No Settling Down

Black Canyon

The second installment in the Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing series, No Wising Up, No Settling Down focuses more on the personal and social aspects of philosophy and class conflict and abandons overtly political songwriting for a more subtle, honest, experimental and poetic approach. Although the album contains pop elements seen in the past few Sole releases, it also harkens back to his classic stream-of-consciousness poetry and noise styles.  No Wising Up, No Settling Down features collaborations with Goldpanda, Sean Bonette of Andrew Jackson Jihad, The Hood Internet & Shapers, Man Mantis, Dosh, Loden, Cars & Trains, Skyrider, Spencertron and Snubluck. A decent chunk of the production is handled by DJ Pain 1, who’s produced tracks for Young Jeezy, Gucci Mane and 50 Cent and pushes Sole’s Nuclear Winter aesthetic into new, exciting and uncharted territory. Coming mere months after the successful release of A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing, this album is a testament to what can be accomplished by truly DIY artists when they own their own time and labor.  “... an artist who has continually—and beautifully—made politics and social issues a part of his music, pushing the boundaries of what hip-hop sounds and looks like.” —Huffington Post  “It’d be easy to assume the former Anticon chief is a man out of time, but that’s not the case.” —Spin  “Sole is a real revolutionary.” —Pitchfork

Sole

A Ruthless Criticism Of Everything Existing

Black Canyon

Sole’s first solo album in seven years is about resistance, power, global revolution and philosophy. The title is lifted from a Marx letter by the same name.  This avant-garde hip-hop album takes the rap-as-critical-theory aesthetic that Sole has developed over the past few years on the Nuclear Winter mixtapes to a more concrete and original musical format. Following up on the critical success of Hello Cruel World, A Ruthless Criticism is the next logical step in this development of rap music; it is challenging and sometimes poppy while still pushing things in a more experimental, belligerent and militant direction. Like Sole’s previous solo albums, A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing has a multitude of collaborations with various producers, and features Busdriver, Alias, Open Mike Eagle, Alias, Ryan Hemsworth, Ausker, Factor, Man Mantis and others.

Sole

Learning To Walk

Black Canyon

A compilation of early sole recordings made between 1994-1998. Featuring collaborations w/ Alias, Moodswing9, Dj Mayonnaise and more. This collection of music shows the evolution of sole from a almost-typical east coast mid 90s rapper to the avant guard rap legend that he would later become. Originally released as a CD via 6months distribution.

Sole

Mansbestfriend Vol.6 - Radioactive Rain

Black Canyon

Recorded during in the wake of the Fukushima meltdown, sole conjures the radioactive rains that swept the world in its immediate aftermath. The 6th installment of the mansbestfriend series is heralded as the best self produced work by sole to date. Ethereal and proggy, new agey and belligerant... Radioactive Rain is 25 minutes of pure love.

Sole

Mansbestfriend Pt. 5

Black Canyon

***The fifth installment from the critically acclaimed mansbestfriend series. SOLE continues the Lazarus-like re-envisioning of his work with the most polished mansbestfriend to date. The music is poppy at points, at other points; "experimental." Thirteen tracks including a remix of “I Walk Alone” by GRAHAM O’BRIEN. Packaged in 4-panel digipacks with artwork by YASAMIN HOLLAND.

Sole / Ravi Zupa

Pyre

Black Canyon

The Pyre is a collaboration between Tim Holland and Ravi Zupa--a 72-page illustrated epic poem with an accompanying full-length "audiobook" album. The pair evokes the confusion, violence and hope of 12,000 years spent digging in the mud. Holland's far-reaching story of civilization is told in the language of ancient myth and draws on Keats, Villon, Debord, Byron and The Epic of Gilgamesh. The poem touches on everything from work, time, human interaction, invention, progress and ethics, expressing the eternal theme: "The only craft we have perfected is the ungentle one." The visual inspiration for The Pyre comes from the persuasive art of propaganda as it appears throughout history. Zupa's series of original drawings adds another dimension to the text using familiar styles from the German Renaissance, Japanese block art, religious iconography from Europe, Asia and pre-Columbian South America, and 20th-century revolutionary propaganda. The CD is a cross between an audiobook, a Herzog soundtrack and an instrumental album, and features 14 tracks recorded on an analog eight-track and computer. Continuing in the vein of the critically acclaimed Mansbestfriend series, the would-be instrumental sections merge with the narrative and draw the listener into the beautiful and chaotic world that is The Pyre. Zupa is Denver's resident poet-painter, sculptor, film artist, activist and intellectual, perhaps best known for his complex and stylistically varied music video work for several international bands including Sole, Why?, Themselves and Genghis Tron. Indie hip-hop pioneer Holland, founder and ex-member of Anticon, is the embodiment of DIY / anti-establishment...

Sole

Nuclear Winter Vol. 1

Black Canyon

***Nuclear Winter, SOLE’s first mixtape in a projected series, is both a return to his Ice Cube roots and an exploration of the mixtape as a form of folkloric practice. Not only does he cold jack beats from the likes of Kanye, Biggie and Rick Ross, he extends traditional mixtape appropriation by reworking each song's original theme into a broader critique. Though sole has long made songs from the raw material of recession, the war in Afghanistan, racist immigration law, and the industries of hype, Nuclear Winter smuggles them into the club.  It is a rap edition of the Broadside records of the '60's and '70's that sought to work as a kind of singing newspaper, reporting on the moment with a radical accent; the Situationists called this détournement, "the diversion of already existing cultural elements to new subversive purposes." When Woody Guthrie heard the Carter Family's hit hymn to Christian disconnection with this world, "Can't Feel at Home," at a dust bowl refugee camp in California, he ripped out of the song its exhausted pieties, and with what was left crafted, "Ain't Got No Home," a hard truth ode to the dispossessed.  On the record's first single, "My President," sole & Jared Paul of Prayers for Atheists (Strange Famous Records) demand the progressive president they wanted to imagine they were voting for. On "Everyday I'm Hustlin'," sole notes that "even the brokest among us are hard workers," and asks, "what the fuck is a hustler?" "Swagga Like...

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

Desert Eagle

Black Canyon

Sole

Exhile Ep

Black Canyon

Sole

Songs That Went Tin

Black Canyon

Sole

Mansbestfriend Pt. 3

Black Canyon

Sole

Mansbestfriend Pt. 1

Black Canyon