Incandescent
Self-Released
Street: 09.28.12
Linus Stubbs = Emancipator + Bonobo + Blockhead
Having heard more of Stubbs’ work with collaborators like The Numbs, it could be easy to typecast him as a standard hip hop producer, more concerned with fat bass and recognizable samples than expressive music. But Incandescent is a different Linus Stubbs than I’ve heard before. Channeling electronic producers like Emancipator, Caribou and Kabanjak, Stubbs manages to craft an album of songs as cohesive and committed as anything I’ve heard from the legendary Blockhead. The instrumentation and samples are varied from classic and dusty-sounding like on “4 Hours Later,” to a little more electronic and clean on the titular track. More than a few of these tracks are going to make it into my ski-mix rotation this year. Particular favorites include “Fresh Set of Wings” and “1, 2.” Stubbs just needs some talented emcees to put over some of this stuff and we have world-class hip hop in the making.