Coolzey and Soce the Elemental Wizard
Coolsay EP
coolzey.bandcamp.com
Coolzey (aka Zack Lint) is a hip-hop all-arounder; he produces most of his own beats, he plays every rock instrument and does his own home studio recordings. On his new Coolsay EP though, he turns over production to Soce the Elemental Wizard, another all-arounder and an east-coast friend with whom he’s performed.
Coolzey’s own productions feature healthy doses of dusty vinyl samples; Soce’s are brighter and cleaner, and are built on his keyboard skills and nerdly command of music theory. Coolzey plays off this sound; when he sings on “Bachelor’s Holiday” the effect is a sort of a hip-hop They Might Be Giants. The shiny, happy melody belies the lovelorn tale in the lyrics: “Well that didn’t take long, now you’re just another song.”
On “Near The End,” Coolzey speed raps a surreal tale of weeding the yard, that turns into a bad trip where he sees “the other people… just bugging out and killing/Everything they didn’t like/Everything that didn’t fit.” Again the poppy bounce of the beat plays against the words.
Coolsay is a wacky afterschool special of an EP that balances serious themes with comedy. Coolzey and Soce have racked up plenty of this sort of songs apart, and together they’re like a bag of Skittles, where some taste like The Three Stooges, and some taste like the sorrow of a wasted life. Betcha can’t eat just one!
This article was originally published in Little Village issue 174
