Astronautalis (Andrew Bothwell) has been a master with his special recipe of folk, rock, rap gumbo.
Always experimenting, Astronautalis has never really settled with a single sound profile. Toeing the line separating spoken word, folk, and Hip Hop has left him an incredible artist. The sort of medley Andy finds so easy to whip into his records is undeniably a much needed form of expression within Hip Hop.
Taking an aerial point of view in respect to Astronautalis’s discography it would seem there’s been a conscious rise in the amount of rapping present on his LP’s. With that said it seems “Sike!” is a natural process of evolution from his previous project This Is Our Science, which had less organic production and took to seating Andy over an electronic soundscape. It fit him well; probably just as well as the folk like backdrop on his previous releases did, and left me wondering if there was any sound that Andy would actually struggle to write over.
“Sike!” pushes that electronic sound even further, with its toes dipping into the shore of Industrial Hip Hop. Andy’s comfort over this kind of beat only reaffirms my former suspicions. This has more Hip Hop flavor but that’s not to say he’s avoiding experimentation. The juxtaposition of his southern-rap content served atop eccentric production is a gumbo in it’s own right, and a good one at that.
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