Breakthrough

by The Gaslamp Killer

It must have been tough for The Gaslamp Killer to have his album Breakthrough debut so close to Flying Lotus's seminal Until the Quiet Comes, because the latter definitely overshadowed the former in the world of dark, atmospheric instrumental electronic hip-hop (if that's what you'd call this).  And that's a little unfair, as this is a very good album.

There are definite similarities between the two artists beyond their choice of record label, but Gaslamp Killer is the more traditional of the two.  He may not push the envelope much with his music, but he knows which edge of it he's most comfortable on.

He fills this seventeen-track deep album with some nice fuzzy beats, aided by the always recognizable Gonjasufi on two tracks, and by other artists I admire like Dimlite and Shigeto.  I especially like 'Flange Face', a driving beat that has Miguel Atwood-Ferguson's strings floating above it.

I could have done without the two interludes, one a parsing of the F-word, and the other a lengthy phone message left by his mother, but the rest of this album bangs from a dark place, and it sounds terrific.