Innerstance.Beatbox

All Little Boys Do Silly Little Dances

[Wobblyhead; 2003]

Styles: instrumental hip-hop, underground hip-hop
Others: Prefuse 73, DJ Shadow, DJ Cam

Side projects can reveal so much about an artist. For Jason Todd, member of the prolific and thought-provoking Def Harmonic, his side project exposed his fans to his talent, emotion and ambition. Under the moniker of Innerstance.Beatbox, Jason Todd focuses on the art of hip-hop crafting, cutting and pasting a strong hip-hop influenced album with All Little Boys Do Silly Little Dances. The album is strictly instrumental, grabbing and holding tight to inexhaustible influences such as DJ Shadow and the newly crowned king of hip-hop patchwork, Prefuse 73. Although Innerstance.Beatbox is far beyond the predecessors in overall creativity and absurd imagination, All Little Boys Do Silly Little Dances is a genuinely enjoyable album to listen to while driving on a sunny Sunday afternoon or while you sit on your front porch sipping a cold beer.

All Little Boys Do Silly Little Dances captures its sound from the ample amount of musical derivatives it ingests. Saxophone, synthesizers and many more instruments are intertwined with hip-hop beats, creating a bona fide mixture of instrumental sounds and resonance with strong influences to jazz, new age and old school. But the closely related sounds to the beat creative groups and performers from Ninja Tune and Mo Wax can serve up too many comparisons. Innerstance.Beatbox is a truly talented outfit but lacks an element of authenticity and singularity, blending them with too many other performers that may produce instrumental music at the same degree of intensity.

Overall, Innerstance.Beatbox’s All Little Boys Do Silly Little Dances is an enjoyable instrumental hip-hop album. Nothing shocking yet nothing exceptional; just a middle of the road anthem for lovers of instrumental hip-hop music.

1. I’ve got to learn to relax more, yo!
2. Quelle heure est-il? (What time is it?)
3. Love in my life
4. Abuse of the spoken word
5. One times one
6. A man, human, on earth
7. I have a special camera!
8. All sun’s children got rhythm
9. Slide

by Wolfman

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