An artistic, surrealist, expressionist piece; GREAT(then after awhile, it didn't mean anything to them) is an epic through the inventive mind of Michul Kuun, known also for his works with the great NAH project. Kuun delivers one of the strongest experimental hip hop albums that I've ever heard, being concurrently controlled and off-the-wall. I'd say that it's absolutely earned the title of Avant-Garde Hip Hop, and with few actual verses on the record, the instrumentals have their chance to shine, and they utilize that chance with every passing second.
Kuun didn't set out to release a safe album, or one that doesn't challenge the listener. Rather, he wanted to make the listener think; and if you give him your attention twenty-six minutes, you will. This record is conscious in a lot of ways, even in its instrumental moments, you're made aware that there's a message being communicated to you. Employing cloudy production, and often utilizing lo-fi techniques, it's easy to become entranced for the period of time that the record is spinning.
With a fairly short runtime and average song-lenth, each track exists here to make its own unique statement, and once everything's been said, it's time for another to take its place in the queue. You can hear a wide variety of influences across the thirteen songs present, without any of them drifting to far from the original intentions of the album. The rap verses mixed in scratch a single itch that maybe wasn't too itchy to begin with, but there's just the right amount of fulfillment in their limited presence. None of the featured vocalists overstay their welcome, and the majority of the songs are instrumentals, so there's plenty of room to breathe between the moments in which the vocalists come to add their own layer of flavor to the existing sonic chaos.
GREAT employs a repeating pattern that helps your brain drift off into space behind walls of ambient synthesizers, and then wakes you up with choppy rhythms and punchy kicks. My favorite song on this record is "Wonderful and Nice," as it's among the most dynamic tracks on the album, and delivers extremes on both ends. It showcases Kuun's proficiency to produce half-time grooves, distorted synth bass, screwy cadences and closes with ambient synths to round out the song. This leads into the spacey closing track that finally lets your entire body rest as its warm tones wash over you until you feel only bliss.
Both the "Great Intro" and "Great Ending" tracks on GREAT are, indeed, great. They're perhaps the safest songs on here, but they're inviting and gratifying, which is more than can be said for many intro and outro tracks on other Hip Hop records. This album is absolutely intelligent, but not too intelligent, and thankfully it doesn't pretend to be any smarter than it is. Michul Kuun is, without a doubt, one of the most forward-thinking musicians in Hip Hop right now; he's not afraid to throw curveballs at the listener, and he's more than willing to challenge existing tropes.
Kuun didn't set out to release a safe album, or one that doesn't challenge the listener. Rather, he wanted to make the listener think; and if you give him your attention twenty-six minutes, you will. This record is conscious in a lot of ways, even in its instrumental moments, you're made aware that there's a message being communicated to you. Employing cloudy production, and often utilizing lo-fi techniques, it's easy to become entranced for the period of time that the record is spinning.
With a fairly short runtime and average song-lenth, each track exists here to make its own unique statement, and once everything's been said, it's time for another to take its place in the queue. You can hear a wide variety of influences across the thirteen songs present, without any of them drifting to far from the original intentions of the album. The rap verses mixed in scratch a single itch that maybe wasn't too itchy to begin with, but there's just the right amount of fulfillment in their limited presence. None of the featured vocalists overstay their welcome, and the majority of the songs are instrumentals, so there's plenty of room to breathe between the moments in which the vocalists come to add their own layer of flavor to the existing sonic chaos.
GREAT employs a repeating pattern that helps your brain drift off into space behind walls of ambient synthesizers, and then wakes you up with choppy rhythms and punchy kicks. My favorite song on this record is "Wonderful and Nice," as it's among the most dynamic tracks on the album, and delivers extremes on both ends. It showcases Kuun's proficiency to produce half-time grooves, distorted synth bass, screwy cadences and closes with ambient synths to round out the song. This leads into the spacey closing track that finally lets your entire body rest as its warm tones wash over you until you feel only bliss.
Both the "Great Intro" and "Great Ending" tracks on GREAT are, indeed, great. They're perhaps the safest songs on here, but they're inviting and gratifying, which is more than can be said for many intro and outro tracks on other Hip Hop records. This album is absolutely intelligent, but not too intelligent, and thankfully it doesn't pretend to be any smarter than it is. Michul Kuun is, without a doubt, one of the most forward-thinking musicians in Hip Hop right now; he's not afraid to throw curveballs at the listener, and he's more than willing to challenge existing tropes.
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