I recently re-read this brilliant bio from Hype Williams (Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland) from their first full-length on De Stijl Records three years ago, and it’s all I can think about when listening to this new release, OneWorld 開発 from L.A.’s Teams.
Anyway, the reason I’m called Hype Williams — aside from the fact it makes everyone actually pay attention to my emails for the first time in my life — is that I’m big into taking commercial hip-hop from the 90s and deconstructing it by feeding it through some default Fruity Loops patches. It’s a recent-past nostalgia thing? Like what Burial did with UK garage, except that silly mug spent literally hours on the stuff! Me? I do all mine on my DS while I’m waiting to sign on (the dole). Think of it as sorta like in 2007, when teenagers used to run around telling each other they “only listened to 90s R&B” for weird kudos points. Anyway, the business plan I drafted in Powerpoint posits the following: Those teenagers have grown up. They are at the early-20s anxiety pinch-point, slap-bang in the demand-saddle. They need aural comfort food, a recent past to idealize. They are, in other words, nostalgic for 2007, when they used to go around telling each other they were nostalgic for 90s R&B. Ergo, Hype Williams is their collective attempt to relive 1998 via 2007. Weird, or what? Anyway, projected net income: $4 million.
OneWorld 開発 feels like reliving 1998 via 2007 via 2010 in 2025… or something like that. Teams constructs rich, futuristic beat-scapes on a familiar foundation of techno and R&B, but elaborates on these structures with such dark, digital, alien textures that it almost feels like being nostalgic for a time that never happened, or a genre that doesn’t exist yet… at least until now.
• Teams: http://teeeams.tumblr.com/
• Fin Records: https://finrecords.com/store/teams/oneworld-vinyl
More about: Teams