Yves Jarvis/Touch & DJ Matto
Yves Jarvis
Sundry Rock Song Stock // Flemish Eye
The gorgeous hymns that make up this spellbinding offering from Yves Jarvis seem to emanate from the air itself, winnowing through the autumn leaves with breathy intimacy. The songs are nestled among instrumental meanderings so that they appear as islands, rising periodically from a chameleon sea of sounds. Sundry Rock Song Stock bubbles and beeps like a primordial orange pekoe, comforting in its warmth as much as in its old-soul magic. Taken in the context of Jarvis’ rapidly expanding repertoire, these intoxicating chants tap into and submerge beneath a rushing river of energy, green-topped as the trees and spontaneous as the cosmos. While The Same But By Different Means and Good Will Come to You explore “midnight blue contemplation” and “morning yellow optimism,” respectively, this third release is situated on the open plains, recorded under an endless sky and receptive to its ever-changing inspiration.
The record begins with “Epitome,” a track that grabs us instantly and sets the tone with its twinkling keyboards, inquisitive basslines, and earthy vocal layering reminiscent of the 1970s and artists like David Crosby. This vocal aesthetic permeates the album as a whole, reminding me of Iron and Wine at times - one of its most soothing qualities. “Epitome” drops away about halfway through into a foreboding loop that functions well as a moody intro for the nine short bursts of epiphany comprising the rest of the collection. Indeed many of the songs feel almost like fragments, like they’re already playing on a beach somewhere as we come up for air. “In Every Mountain” and “For Props” continue the same satisfying vocal style, carrying us atop the waves on a raft of buoyant harmonies.
“Victim” opens with a soft, lilting acoustic guitar, soon joined by many Yves Jarvises and their by now familiar, hypnotizing whispers. Sundry Rock Song Stock conjures such a richly playful mood - catchy, soulful, and unique in its ebb and flow. The next number, “Semula,” slowly builds into a spiritual celebration, holding there for just the right amount of time before dissolving back into the mirage from whence it came. Following this, a pensive “Notch In Your Belt” unfurls from the aether, combining honest vocals that cut to the heart with the homemade click clack of scrapers, hand drums, and clinks that sit high in the mix, giving the tune an airy and natural quality.
This uncut gem of an album comes to a glorious close with “Fact Almighty,” a breathtaking psalm that takes us out, away from the shore and into the open water towards a peach-coloured sun as it sets and brings an end to our musings. Yves Jarvis’ age (only 23 years) belies a maturity and posture we can only marvel at. His albums show equanimity, teach us of bravery, and above all, encircle us with his wide open heart. More than that, they dare us to open our own.
- Nick Maas
Touch & DJ Matto
Electric Sheep // Hand'Solo Records
Something about Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner seems to resonate with rappers and beatmakers. Everyone from Ice Cube and Method Man to The Beastie Boys and Aesop Rock has referenced the film and its characters in verse, and dozens of artists have sampled bits of Vangelis’ classic score, including El-P, and again, Aesop Rock. However, while El-P has called Blade Runner his favourite film, and Run the Jewels used a tweaked version of the cover with the duo and the title “Jewel Runners” to hype up RTJ3, it’s left-field Canadian hip hop artists Touch and DJ Matto that have devoted an entire album to exploring the film and the original text that the film was based on, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? For anyone who heard “Mars Attacks” by Aesop and craved more sci-fi exploration in underground hip hop, this is the album you’ve been waiting for.
A sci-fi rap album is a tough saucer to land, but Touch manages to pull it off by finding common ground between the lives of the replicants, the artificial humans hunted by the blade runners in Androids Dream, and himself. While Touch’s previous album Jaws took inspiration from the classic blockbuster of the same name, Philip K. Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and some other works from his oeuvre provide a much wealthier base for the rapper to pull from. As you would expect, the lyrics are the focus here, and Touch covers racism, loneliness, love, and otherness while delving into the source material. The estrangement of talking about the woes of life as a replicant while actually talking about the human experience gives everything he says a tasty extra layer of meaning. Touch and DJ Matto are locked in for the entire album, and the slick grooves and biting flow make it accessible to any hip hop fan, but fans of Philip K. Dick and science fiction will experience the next best thing to a mood organ trip.
Electric Sheep’s theme is a bit out there, but the music itself is grounded. The record is a much less challenging listen than avant-garde rap group clipping.’s science fiction themed album Splendor & Misery, which crafted its own sci-fi narrative, taking influence from 2001: A Space Odyssey and works by Octavia E. Butler. While that album’s unconventional theme was matched by experimental structures and devices, Touch and DJ Matto keep the beats rich and groovy, full of old-school scratching and funky bass. The fuzz bass of “I Kill You” is a far cry from the psych flavours of India in “Black Label,” but the groove never stops. They’ve studied at the school of Aesop Rock realizing that they can get away with abstract and academic lyrics if the songs still slap. The tempos vary, the music is diverse, and the music and lyrics are never in competition with each other. They complement each other perfectly.
For some picky hip hop fans, Electric Sheep is a rare album that nails everything they love about hip hop and scraps everything they find tiresome and cliche. Touch’s lyrics are clever, focused and delivered with a confident swagger, but there’s no brag rapping here. On his previous album Jaws, Touch committed to his theme by embodying a killer shark as he exhibited speed, efficiency, and ferociousness. It was fun to hear an Edmonton-based MC rap about being the best like Gretzky, but there’s so much more depth to his lyrics on Electric Sheep. On “Voight Kampff” Touch spins the classic test that was designed to expose an android testee as a replicant rather than a human, imagining it as a tool of the hip hop elite. “Expand” casts Touch as an alien delivering an environmental message from another planet à la The Day the Earth Stood Still, focusing on human carelessness, narcissism and imperialism. “Rachel Rosen” is the album’s most tender track, on which the speaker gushes over his Nexus 6 muse, but “Soldier” is poignant as Touch explores military life through the guise of disposable soldiers devoid of human emotions. Touch’s flow and lyrical sensibility recall Aesop Rock, but while Aesop’s lyrics can be too dense and labyrinthine for some, Touch keeps the message clear despite the frequent off-world anecdotes.
Touch and DJ Matto deliver robot-like consistency on Electric Sheep, crafting twelve songs that range from 2:58 to 3:50 in length. There are no silly skits, no lengthy soulful detours, and no deep cut zany experiments. Whether this duo would pass the Voight-Kampff test is unknown, but the album they’ve created is brainy, and full of heart. Electric Sheep is a masterclass in embracing a theme, and Touch has clearly done his research. Even though the topic doesn’t scream rap album, DJ Matto’s crisp beats and Touch’s no-nonsense delivery quickly silence any sceptics. Those who occupy the section of the Venn Diagram where “fans of hip hop” and “fans of science fiction” meet won’t have to wait ten years between Deltron 3030 albums anymore; A new sci-fi rap force has arrived. Ironically, despite the lack of braggadocio here, Electric Sheep proves Touch and DJ Matto are some of the best in the game.
- Devon Dozlaw
