Mahatma X: A Mobtown Suite Vol. II
Home Assembly Music

If the raw beat-tape aesthetic of A Mobtown Suite Vol. 2 comes as something of a surprise to Home Assembly Music followers, it shouldn't: in 2017, the label issued the outfit's first volume and in that same year Death From A Love, the solo outing by Mahatma X member MALK (identity unknown). Though he's joined by fellow Philadelphians Jahred The Mutt (Jared Frankel) and Henry Stanktowne (Henry Becker aka Jhana Gumption) on vocals and drums respectively, MALK would appear to be the one primarily responsible for the project's lo-fi boom-bap (info on the album's back cover suggests Mahatma X currently operates under the name MADDOGG).

Mahatma X traffics in the kind of crate-digging, samples-heavy milieu familiar to fans of Dilla and Prefuse 73, which is to say a cut'n'paste universe inhabited by an uninterrupted flow of beat sketches, some lasting mere seconds, others slightly longer. In this instance, the twenty-four cuts split evenly between the vinyl sides, though in truth there are probably two to three times as many sketches in play when a given track features so many parts. Presented in a beat-tape format, the release is available in limited CD and vinyl editions as well as a download.

Indicative of the music's ADD style, “Embrace” devotes its first twenty-four seconds to a sweetly R&B vocal-based episode before abruptly moving into a loping, sax-bleeting middle section and then taking things out with a head-nodding coda—all of it in under two minutes. Head-turning moments arise, during the opening minute of “Fuzzing In,” for example, when classical strings collide with synth bloops, voices, and, of course, beats, and when “Shadow” plays like some weird marriage of Afrobeat with the groove from Spin Doctors' “Two Princes.” Echoes of Dilla and Prefuse surface audibly in “Potpourri” and “Fluff Piece” though their presence is felt elsewhere, from the stutter-funk melodicism of “Aperitif” to the bass-throbbing bump of “Rupt.”

In keeping with the lo-fi aesthetic of the genre, the cuts are generally raw, in a few places perhaps a little too ragged for my taste; that being said, music of this type should never be too polished. While vocals occasionally appear, with Ugonna Anyadike (aka Android no. 23) guesting on “Tanqueray” and Frankel surfacing elsewhere, A Mobtown Suite Vol. 2 is largely an instrumental hip-hop affair, with MALK weaving dusty, crackle-smeared samples lifted from jazz, soul, and funk sources and crisp beats into a collagistic smorgasbord of downtempo blaze.

July 2019