a belated eulogy for anticon (pt. 2: 2004-2008)
second installment of a 3-part retrospective on the godfather of too-online hip-hop labels, which evidently stopped existing at some point
pt. 1; pt. 3
in the previous essay in this series i mentioned that why?’s album alopecia seems to be the only record anticon ever released that maintains any sort of cultural relevance, but that isn’t entirely true. for a period roughly spanning 2005 until the label’s closure in 2018 they served as sort of a forrest gump–like entity stumbling through various underground and burgeoningly mainstream corners. in the second half of the 2000s, much in the same way saddle creek suddenly began branching out beyond their core stable of artists that reflected the unique thesis statement likely more implicit that anticon’s cocksure ‘music for the advancement of hip-hop,’ the label started working with established artists—and generally not the ones you may have expected.
at some point dose and jel linked up with the notwist to form 13 & god, a fairly anticon-y project that transcended the confines that held their other project themselves to the underground, while a diverse cast of familiar (and, for the most part, very weird) artists began releasing music through the label: son lux launched their career on anticon, while danielson and tobacco also put out a bit of material with them. although it’s technically an ipecac release, zach hill’s post-hella/pre-death grips debut solo record got an exclusive vinyl release through anticon.
i think maybe the weirdest one, though—and maybe there are some ties to danielson here—was the christian (?) rock band anathallo, another thing for which i’m still not entirely clear what the cultural footprint was. seemed to me like it was popular with folks who liked christian screamo stuff, but that doesn’t explain why i discovered their anticon-released album on my dad’s ipod shortly after it came out. anyway.
it seemed like (with the exception of anathallo) these artists were drawn to the label due to the open-mindedness emanating from its releases—who else would’ve put out cybergrinders genghis tron’s remix collection (well, four of their other remix EPs found homes on other labels permissive of this particular brand of chaos, but still….), mike patton’s weird trip-hop project peeping tom, or sufjan’s glitchy ode to the octomom alongside serengeti and son lux as s/s/s?
one of the toughest parts about losing anticon comes with the fact that in its later years they became an incredible incubator for artists who have quickly become pretty big names, who likely wouldn’t have been given that sort of creative freedom with a more established label, or that sort of exposure with a likeminded indie: baths and young fathers released some of their earliest material on the label, while angel deradoorian kicked off her post-dirty projectors solo career with them. pictureplane and slugabed both released (in my opinion) their best material through anticon, though it doesn’t seem like either artist was particularly interested in launching a capital-c career from them.
i mention all of this because it bolsters my point that there still seem to be plenty of avenues to discovering anticon’s core artists, so it bums me—a guy clinging to something from my youth that evidently may have aged less gracefully than i perceive it to have—out that i haven’t really heard any of these artists’ names mentioned since alias died in 2018. even then, it felt like music journalists were tweeting out tributes speaking in the past tense about their love for his work, as if anticon’s place in underground rap was merely a stepping stone for middle class white kids to later dive into the real stuff while growing out of whatever category of pseudo-rap they’d consider this to be.
i had the thought recently that it would surprise me if anyone born after the label was founded had heard anything anticon had released outside of alopecia, but i’m realizing now that i’ve become so out of touch with modes of music consumption that that album may have gotten lost in the back pages of deactivated tumblr accounts too.
10 crucial releases, 2004-2008
various artists, anticon label sampler: 1999-2004 (2004) can’t say i’ve ever heard another label comp exclusively comprised of tracks recycled from the artists’ already-released records that i return to with any sort of frequency, nor one which has several tracks that i primarily recall within the context of this release rather than the LP they originally appeared on. just a perfectly tracked collection that serves as a greatest hits of anticon’s first five years while liberally truncating and altering some of the songs to make them fit together better. pretty sure i bought this CD for a penny off amazon and it was the thing that made me be like ‘oh i gotta hear all these albums huh.’
why?, elephant eyelash (2005) fairly logical middle ground between the bedroom experiments of oaklandazulasylum and the painfully earnest pop of alopecia that occasionally just comes across as somewhat conventional (if not always at least a bit left-field) mid-aughts indie-pop. follows through on the promise of tracks like ‘bad entropy’ with each song here possessing some similar degree of headscratching lyrical genius and instrumental acumen (‘gemini’ is fucking unbelievable and i still cannot figure out why) while also embracing lyrics like ‘hump gentle on a bed of nails’ that lose you your aux privileges. ‘elephant eyelash’ is a yoni-ism for boner by the way. jsyk.
pedestrian, unindian songs (2005) only album from the most peripheral of anticon’s founding members (he’s featured on a bunch of the prior releases and wrote some lyrics for sole). still not entirely sure what the deal is/was with his preacher persona (album features three ‘sermons’) but i think this record kinda suffered for the fact that it arrived so long after all the other guys established the anticon sound—since jel, yoni, and alias produce the majority of this it isn’t a huge deviation from the label’s prior output….though can’t say anything on those prior albums is as goofy as the baumbach-inspired ‘jane 2.’ god damned touched that pedestrian tracked down my email to thank me one time for a tiny blurb i wrote on that song for a no longer existent film blog like a decade ago.
alias & tarsier, brookland/oaklyn (2006) significant as one of alias’ two early LP-length collabs (other one’s with saxophonist/brother ehren) and oddly feels descendent from looking glass—tho instead of rain-day raps this is trip-hop often recalling alias’ ‘teepee on a highway blues’ instrumental featuring tarsier’s lightly-bjorky dream-pop vox (love that alias even busts into a rap verse out of nowhere on ‘last nail’ (also features what is possibly dose’s most alien-beaming-down-to-earth feature)). not a particularly upbeat release but still hints at the sunnier outlook of a lot of alias’ future instrumentals.
bracken, we know about the need (2007) never got into whatever in the world category of sleepy post-rock you would classify hood as but turns out if you put a beat that goes moderately hard behind it it could really whip. solo project from the hood guy which, in spite of the occasional mod-hard beat, really appeals to me more as an ambient project in the sense that its bizarrest, most hypnotic, droniest sound experiments are clearly the draw here rather than hood guy leaning into pop conventions. somewhat unrelated but yoni and alias’ rework of ‘heathens’ is legitimately one of the best songs i’ve ever heard.
sole and the skyrider band, s/t (2007) if selling live water was sole’s political awakening, and live from rome his realization that politics would become his primary lane as a rapper, the skyrider s/t feels like the moment he fully felt comfortable committing to that and figured out how to channel his unique instrumental ideas to bolster his lyrics (in this case vividly painting a desolate, capitalism-decimated planet with an insanely creative live band). 15 years later and i’m still catching new things on this album, whether it’s lyrically (split-second twin peaks sample) or in the musical reference points (dub on ‘nothing is free;’ if you squint ‘hundred light years and running’ is some warped take on folk-punk). possibly both my favorite opening and closing tracks on any album (the pipe organ on ‘stupid things’ slays so hard), though similar to how SLW slowly eclipsed bottle of humans as my fav sole album i think plastique has finally edged this out as the superior skyrider LP.
odd nosdam, level live wires (2007) along with burner this is the most cohesive ‘album’ album from nosdam, who also released a skate video OST and some more song-fragment-y stuff on his own in addition to providing beats on most of the anticon emcees’ outputs. still fairly ambient and entirely downtempo but takes a few somewhat pop-y turns with the help of features from why?, jel, bracken, and tunde from tv on the radio. interesting choice holding burner’s title track for this album…..even more interesting choice building that track’s instrumental over a sample of someone laying on their horn.
telephone jim jesus, anywhere out of the everything (2007) as someone admittedly too ignorant on the subject to make a definitive statement, telly j.j. is the anticon producer who most closely resembles a bridge to the other major cult electronica lanes of the era, whether it’s the downtempo boards of canada stuff or, as with this album’s insane closer, the frigid, scattered sounds of venetian snares (‘birdstatic,’ meanwhile seems like it influenced the direction alias took). still tons of anticon stock sounds on anywhere, while pretty frequent vox from pedestrian (and a dash of yoni) and some uniquely surreal moments (chopped up acoustic guitar (?) on ‘faces all melted’) anchor it deeply within that universe. seems as mad about bush as the anticon stuff from three or four years prior, but also just also like…..so tired.
alias, resurgam (2008) album that’s simply about hearting drum machine. 180 from the utterly bleak ‘watching water’ to ‘drum machines,’ while even the more downcast yoni-featuring ‘well water black’ is backed by twinkling melody and the murmurings-about-death ‘death watch’ feels more introspective than particularly somber. kind of helps mark a turning point for anticon where this borderline (when not straight-up) fun electronic music eclipses the dense, navel-gazy raps and musty production of the early years. i mean i miss the musty stuff….but i accept this as a worthy substitute.
restiform bodies, tv loves you back (2008) expressly anti-consumerist electro-hip-hop giving passage the opportunity to pivot from the post-nuclear dystopia of forcefield kids to the post-shopping-network dystopia of our more contemporary hell that’s dated only by an extreme makeover home edition reference. feels like bandmates telephone jim jesus and bomarr are both laying down beats simultaneously possibly intentionally giving the televisual sensation of constant overstimulation over the course of a runtime matching that of a network tv series uploaded commercial-free to streaming services. only true anticon heads can tell the difference between passage and pedestrian’s vocals (which i guess makes me technically an honorary anticon head).