COOLZEY
Dark Mantras
coolzey.bandcamp.com
Coolzey must be very wicked, since it’s clear he gets no rest. Sandwiched in between all the other musical activities he’s dropped Dark Mantras, which contains 13 short hip-hop instrumentals. This is more a beat tape than an album proper; each track is a live performance on his Akai MPC1000 Sampler. As such, the tracks have a ‘Music Minus One’ feel to them—they’d be perfect for a beat-poor MC to use as the basis for writing rhymes to. The skeletal tracks on Mantras don’t feel incomplete, they just require a different kind of listening than pop or hip-hop songs with big egos front and center, demanding attention.
Coolzey’s funky minimalism is perfect for setting a background mood. My favorite track is “Ghost Party” which is just drums, a single organ chord and a spooky “ooooh!” vocal sample. After a few repetitions, the “ooooh!” takes on the aspect of an unconventional melody. Each of the tracks explores the possibilities of repetition in that way, as when you repeat the same word over and over until it’s drained of meaning. It turns into a pure sound, worthy of contemplation as a context-free sequence of vibrations. It’s like meditation you can dance to, a perfect soundtrack for falling asleep.
