MP3 Premiere: Get To Know Antonionian, Anticon's Great Noir Hope, Tonight at Rickshaw Stop

By Daniel Levin Becker Wed., Mar. 23 2011 at 10:31 AM

Categories: New Releases

Bright Eye

Fans of darkly brooding melodies and intricate micro-beatplay take note: the newest addition to the esteemed Anticon roster is celebrating the release of its self-titled debut tonight at the Rickshaw Stop, along with DJ sets from Jel and Doseone. You should probably be there.

Antonionian, or one Jordan Dalrymple, the Oakland-based multi-instrumentalist, comes fresh from stints with Anticon supergroup Subtle, Themselves-Notwist collabo 13&God, and French popsmiths General Elektriks. His album, a half hour of dizzy MPC hypnosis and lushly incantatory vocals, sounds like the work of a well-traveled artist who's taken his time to craft something thoughtful and personal out of all his influences. Check out the premiere of "My Mind's I" below:

This track is a suitable but incomplete preview of what Dalrymple does on Antonionian: there are otherworldly siren yelps and meditative lyrics about spiritual cartography. There are late-'90s trip-hop touches and hammily produced melodic turns recalling, say, latter-day Pinback covered by Depeche Mode. There's twitchy neo-soul ("Into the Night") and German-sounding buoyant vampery ("The Ride"). All of it comes together smoothly and solidly, from track to track; indeed, the album boasts the closest thing to honest-to-goodness songs we've heard from the Anticon camp in a long time. A strange, diverse odyssey with more splendors than challenges.

More info on tonight's show here and on the album here.

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