Freeway, Broker/Dealer, and More

FREEWAY
Philadelphia Freeway
(Roc-a-Fella/Def Jam)

Shout, shout, let it all out: Right now, the whole Dirty South seems to be nothing but gangs of fat guys in Caddies with 22-inch rims bellowing over really tinny snare hits. Freeway shouts, toothe market demands itbut, being from the East, he avoids the Oi!-alongs in favor of a post-Ghostface Killah emo rasp. Philadelphia Freeway, his debut, is a rather unassuming record, but it may just be the year's best hip-hop full-length. (Caveat: Like nearly every hip-hop album since 2Pac's 1996 monsterpiece All Eyez on Me, Philadelphia Freeway is at least four tracks too long.) Freeway's secret weapons are the same ones Jay-Z introduced on 2001's The Blueprint: Producers Kanye West, Bink!, and Just Blaze, along with newcomers Black Key and Ruggedness. Like tarted-up backpacker beats desperate for the cover of The Source, the production is all dusty old soul samples, Op-Art stabs, the kind of "live" drums that are invariably tighter than any live band could ever be, and Freeway's sensitive-thug sermonizing (that is, when he's not "Snatchin' the dishes out your kitchen"). The most startling track, "Life," is probably also the one you'll be itching to skip most: Straight up, baleful black rock, built on an Eddie Money (!) sample. The resta mix of straight-ahead bangers and sweet, R&B-inflected bounceis just plain nourishing: hip-hop soul food, the best rapprochement of over- and underground in a long time. Plus: The only good Snoop guest spot of the decade. JESS HARVELL

Despite its titular shout-out to the boom days of the dot-com era, Initial Public Offering, San Francisco techno duo Broker/ Dealer's full-length debut, is very much a document of the current bust. What's this mean? Extra value! Folks are a lot less willing to shell out $15 just to hear somebody tweak a hi-hat these days than they were five or six years ago, no matter how brilliant the tweakification. And while they build their musical edifice on the foundation laid by the minimalist masters on the Kompakt and Chain Reaction labels, Ryan Bishop and Ryan Fitzgerald definitely tend to float toward the richer end of the electron pool, where all the color is. Album opener "Take Your Time," for example, begins with short, muffled chords and a rudimentary synth figure that billows into a near-arpeggio as the skeletal 4/4 beat-and-dub-wise bass-line combo glides in underneath like a moving sidewalk. One by one, a veritable school of synths appears, some peeking shyly from behind the mix's curtain, others darting around in the middle foreground; the boldest snap front and center to take their turns on melody lane. Initial Public Offering most resembles Detroit Techno in the vein of MK and early Carl Craig, not to mention Selected Ambient Works 85-92-era Aphex Twin. In other words, the strongest music of the last Great Recessionand some of the main reasons a lot of early adapters embraced techno in the first place. ROD SMITH

You almost have to be a fan for this one. Twenty-one tracks of detuned, sax-screeching, garbage-can- clanking free-jazz-meets-free-punk probably make this collection a bad idea for both the faint of heart and the uninitiated. Arrington de Dionyso and his Old Time Relijun are a fairly unheard-of three piece to begin with, so releasing a collection of rarities almost seems like a joke, but you know how those Olympia bands can be. Although most of the lo-fi scuzz songs on Varieties clock in around two-and-half minutes, every second consists of a flattened note, a faltering growl, or a fractured thump. What's more, on songs like "Telephone Call," the loosely configured story behind the song is as difficult as the aural abstraction of it. As Microphones/Mount Eerie auteur Phil Elvrum mans the drums, de Dionyso condemns an ex with a pained horse's bray, declaring, "You just pick my heart with your poisoned-tip arrow." Moments later, he's practically barking, while the sourest of guitar notes are plucked like rubber bands. And that's the long versionhalfway through the short version, de Dionyso is essentially sobbing. Even when the band goes pop, as on the Mountain Goats-esque "Black Cat," Varieties isn't necessarily easy to listen to. But sometimes rhythmic, conceptual junk is just what you're hungry for. If you can take the raunchiest Captain Beefheart, the kookiest Yoko Ono, and the Third Reich of the Residents, you canand probably shouldat least try to stomach this. LAURA CASSIDY

The third song on this brand-new, epic, smashing, operatic opus of kicking fun, having names, and taking ass by Andrew Wilkes-Krier is called "Tear It Up," and it's totally the most Thor's-hammer-cracking-your-skull-in-half-and-planting-flowers-inside awesome of the bunch, not just because we learn all about Andrew's radical high-school days ("I met a lot of friends who were cool/But a lot of them were jerks"), but because like almost every cut on the awesomely titled The Wolf, the song title equals the chorus equals what the song's about, which is to say "Tear It Up" is about tearing it up all night, "Long Live the Party" is about the party living long, "Make Sex" is about making sex, and as Andrew himself says on his absolutely gnarly official site, new single "Never Let Down" is about "not letting yourself down and not letting down the things that you have chosen to doand it's also about whatever you want it to be," which is, like, whoa, and all that embracing the party and living hard stuff is fantastic, but the one thing that's not quite as awesome about The Wolf is that, compared to last year's I Get Wet, there's a ton more piano and midtempo glam licks and a ton less tornado-alert shredding, so tearing it up all night isn't quite as easy and, as a matter of fact, this album almost sounds like the soundtrack to the '84 L.A. Summer Olympics, but I guess Andrew's already talked about the need to party hard and now he's just celebrating the apex of the hard party from his throne, which is completely outstanding!!!!!!!!! ANDREW BONAZELLI