When sole contacted us about his new record it came with the self-aware disclaimer, “if you are ambivalent about my 'over the top' political rap shit you might find this interesting/refreshing”. We can never forget sole declaring the white man is the fucking devil (it's one of favorite sole moments, honestly), but as quotable as the Anticon founder, turned self-release machine can be, the production on whitenoise: nomoredystopias breathes fine on instrumental merit.
It's still a political record with titles like “Military Entertainment Complex” (commentary on war video games as recruitment tools) and “Sunset over a BP Oil Spill”; sole defining the record as instrumental music apt for reflecting upon the critical. The intent is the intent and while “Fallujah” is about the most vital and brutal moment in the Iraq Occupation, it's also a Bollywood burner with a backbeat built for unwinding at the Danceteria. sole's wife Yasamin plays keys on every song, while her husband manipulates samples from 80's pop, Robocop, vintage sci-fi, Anderson Cooper (no, AC does not have a band), and Iraqi Mujahideen videos. Much like his contemporary El-P, sole operates in a template that is rooted in Bomb Squad cacophony, but well-equipped to grace the Low End Theory stages. The title, whitenoise: nomoredystopias, is lifted from a Don Delillo novel concerning fear (real and imagined) as threats to societal balance. The danger rap of whitenoise is a sensory overload of terror-transmissions against glimmers of hope, suffocated and claustrophobic – it is facing atrocities head on and processing them through Akai MPC compositions.
sole's whitenoise: nomoredystopias is self-released on his Bandcamp and available on cassette September 17 at soleone.org.
