Cut Chemist
The Audience's Listening
Beatdown


Best to get it out early: the new Cut Chemist is insane. 'The Audience's Listening' is one of the most listenable (pun gleefully intended) turntable albums released in ages. Scratch-based music has a tendency to get occasionally bland or same-y, especially outside of a live context, but Cut Chemist's latest is packed full of enough-layered instrumentals, awesomely atmospheric, old-time-y film samples and classy, impressive, yet never over-the-top, scratches.

The first thing that struck me about 'The Audience Is Listening' was Cut Chemist's tendency to play around with beat styles and genres. Instead of cutting solely over the typical (and as much as we love it, clichˇd) boom-bap breakbeat so prevalent in hip-hop that it practically defines the genre, he makes use of jazz, electro, country and many other styles for his backing beats.

Motivational Speaker opens the album and alongside a series of amusing vocal samples, Cut Chemist plays with tempo, feel and mood through a stomping introduction to his skills over a pastiche of beats, from bouncing polkas to fast jazz. The Lift is a drone-y, eerie outing featuring more synth-pads than a Brian Eno record and a lovely little flute melody.

Storm, featuring Mr. Lif and Edan, is considerably different from most of the other tracks on the album in that it's a pretty rough, '80s-influenced electro/hip-hop crossover, featuring a standout vocal by Edan which shines above the other MCs on the record. Not that any of them are bad - Hymnal's flow on the catchy, acoustic-bass driven What's The Altitude is almost sung and serves as one of the coolest little songs on the album.

Cut Chemist's scratching abilities are showcased well on 'The Audience's Listening' and since they clearly aren't the focus point for the record, it turns out much more listenable. Not every song features a scratch and the ones that do are well-suited, well-executed and add to the song, rather than act as a kind of DJ wank exercise. He has clearly focused on the production side of things and it has aid off. 'The Audience's Listening' is an incredibly varied, polished and beautiful-sounding record.

Ben Ford-Smith