trippin' the rift can you trip like i do?

Ylem – Urban Grey

What I always appreciate in music is thoughtfulness and cohesiveness. Lumping a bunch of good songs together without any kind of idea behind it can easily ruin a good record. Luckily, Australian Ylem seemed to put a considerable amount of thought into his release Urban Grey as well as into each and every track on it. Ylem is mostly known as a dubstep DJ, but he chose trip-hop as primary style of his debut LP. While I'm not sure if that was a wise decision commercially, with dubstep being "hot" (ugh) and everything, but I'm sure not complaining, because Urban Grey is one hell of a trip-hop album. Ylem finds ways to organically infuse trip-hop with dubstep elements so that they don't stick out like some odd out-of-context afterthoughts. Three tracks - the intense "Roll The Dice", soulful "Once Were Bison" and eerily technological "Don't Test" make a powerful cluster of trip-hop-meets-dubstep awesomeness and just those tracks alone make the record worth listening. Fortunately, the rest of the LP is not half-assed fillers, but first class downtempo tunes, crafted out of carefully selected samples and nod-evoking beats. The album's atmosphere mellows down in its second half (starting with the appropriately named "Down") and is done in that ear-pleasing dubby downtempo key similar to Thievery Corporation (and with similar quality as well). It is kind of letting go of that signature trip-hop+dubstep blend for a while, which makes it lose some of the intensity (and makes it a bit easier to digest) but also some of its individuality, which I wish was preserved throughout the whole album. "Vapour Trail" wraps everything up nicely, touching up on all the excellent innovations of Urban Grey and leaving us yearning for more.

Visit Ylem's official site.

R.I.Y.L. Thievery Corporation, Duffstep, hoodies
personal favs: "Roll The Dice", "Once Were Bisons", "Acceleration Of The Sun"

tipkin's rating