Rawhead’s 12” Psychedelic Romp Psychopomp
Glens Falls-based Sub-Bombin Records has announced the release of Rawhead’s third full-length album and his first to be pressed to wax. Psychopomp finds the ambient hip-hop producer expanding his sonic oeuvre outward in every dimension of the space-time continuum and the aural eardrum experience is, shall we say, fresh.
The usual influences continue to permeate Rawhead’s sound, from the now canonized Detroit school of beat making via James Yancey aka J Dilla to the producer’s longstanding passion for low end dub luminaries King Tubby and Lee Perry. It’s all here, only more exquisitely refined than we’ve heard on the Beatwise & Alchemy albums. And just as Rawhead settles into his groove on the opening title track, he cranks the knobs distorting the cerebral inputs of the listener, and we now know what’s been in his headphones – the wunderkind producer sent from outer space by way of Los Angeles, Flying Lotus.
Psychopomp is the sound of a producer finding his voice through subtraction and distillation – Rawhead has stripped away the samples of old and recurring time signatures driving the backbeat and crafted his sound on stage as if it was his studio during some of the sickest live sets ever put on by Sub-Bombin. Innovative experimentation live with drums and looping has manifested in a veteran producer with a newfound command of negative space and astral tension permeating his fingertips. Prepare to be in on a little hometown secret before it goes viral – Rawhead is for real.
Psychopomp is available in its entirety on 12” vinyl through Glens Falls’s own Sub-Bombin Records or for the digi-philes out there, Side A of the album can be purchased along with 2 bonus tracks in a multitude of formats from Rawhead’s Bandcamp.