Alias & Doseone - Less is Orchestra Album Review

  Harry Mcilroy 

Alias & Doseone - Less is Orchestra

Genre - Alternative Hip Hop, IDM

9/10

Less is Orchestra was released right after ridiculously prolific underground producer Alias, whose career span over 20 years, sadly passed away in the March of 2018. He was a co-founder of Anticon, one of the best rap labels no ones ever heard of. 

Alias and company came to prominence just around the massive rise in easy to access music production software, ranging from free applications like Garageband to any number of online beat sequencers. This all meant that the creativity hidden in any inspired person could suddenly and very easily be tapped into. The unfortunate downside of this unrelenting creativity and rejection of accessibility was that mainstream appreciation was always just out of the labels reach. Nowadays, you don’t hear a thing from this forgotten surrealistic art-rap music scene. And listening to this album, you do kind of get why. The unrelentingly complex, idm-style beats paired with vocals so animated they occasionally veer into cartoonish, it isn’t exactly applicable or casual music. But once you really look into the torrents of abstract sound and rhythms, weird vocal inflections and nasal flows, an intricately crafted and ridiculously hard hitting set of tracks is revealed.

Doseone, co-founder of the label and this project's sole vocalist compliments these instrumentals perfectly. Often I find Doseone to be a bit over the top at times, trying a little too hard to pen the craziest and most abstract flows possible. But when paired with this stupidly ambitious and rhapsodic abstract production, he excels. I really can’t think of any other artist that could take on these gargantuan instrumentals so effortlessly. Listening to this music, you can really tell that these artists have been collectively making music for over half a century. There is also the way this album includes quite strange and surreal poetic lyrics. A prime example of this can be found in one of the albums slower paced and conceptual tracks, The Doghawk.

“then the Doghawk returned and started to pant, while infinite insects scaled my neck, and slowly did envelop my head, like a living, clicking, sticking, hissing mask, that politely parts for my eyes, and moves when I laugh”

These are the kinds of lyrics I really love. Surreal, pretty, up to interpretation, and far more focused more on creating an image than portraying static emotion or tone. 

The other type of track found here is the “banger” variety. These tracks use all of hip hop's classic elements like 808s, minimal drum pattern, and heavy bass, and transforms them into these amorphous ever evolving mutant trap flavoured beats. The album's second track, Top Billin' II, is one of the best examples of this. It’s hard to tell where a hook starts, or a bridge ends, and it all bleeds together into one rapidly shifting, constantly hard hitting piece of hip hop.

Throughout the project, there is an undeniable sense of urgency. Not because of some attempt at mainstream success, or even the duo trying to prove themselves, it’s the raw power of two stupidly experienced artists coming together to explore the outer reaches of experimental hip hop. And that is a very exciting prospect.