Various artists, All Your Friend’s Friends (Nov. 11, K Records, krecs.com)
K Records is not known for its hip-hop releases, but they are there throughout the Olympia label’s 30-year history. Speckled among better-known albums by Beat Happening, Built to Spill, The Microphones, The Blow, The Gossip, and Mirah are releases by artists and bands like Black Anger, Silent Lambs Project, Tilson, and, most recently, Eprhyme.
It’s a largely ignored canon, overshadowed by the lo-fi, DIY, twee pop and punk that has helped the label earn its international reputation. And yet the marrying of this better-known naive bedroom sensibility with a more beat-driven urban sound has become the lifelong project of K founder Calvin Johnson, who prefers to describe his label as trading in “classic lo-fi garage soul.”
So All Your Friend’s Friends is not the oddity that it might first appear. In fact, the 18-track compilation might be the purest expression to date of Johnson’s aims. The project is helmed by Oldominion producer Smoke M2D6, who was given access to the K Records vault and left to pull samples from its vast catalog of full-lengths and singles. Out of these indie-pop scraps he would produce the tracks and invite Northwest MCs to contribute a few bars each. If the concept seems novel, the results are decidedly not.
The samples chosen by the producer show his talents as a selector while revealing some moments of genius from K’s artists. In particular, Smoke M2D6 has an affinity for British popsmith Jeremy Jay, whose indelible hooks are found on four tracks here—the most impactful on “Evolve Away,” a propulsive rave built from the heartbeat and finger-snaps of Jay’s “Gallop.” Other favorites include The Microphones, whose plaintive wail from “The Glow Part II” haunts the absurdist “Pizza Chef,” and Mirah, whose strings and aching alto soften a suite of powerful, emotional tracks near the end of the collection.
But this is hip-hop that does not lean on its source material. Rather, it finds strength in the individual performances of its producer and its MCs. Free Whiskey is a weirdo-rap revelation, and Heddie Leone, the collection’s only female artist, delivers a seductive performance that slips comfortably over the beat of Calvin Johnson’s minimalist come-on “I Am Without.” XPerience shines brightest, delivering verse on four tracks and, whether inciting a party or in deep spiritual contemplation, hitting the pocket.
Overall the collection is bold and effusive, sounding at its greatest moments like a party hitting its peak. In particular, “Evolve Away” and “Jump Kick the Legs,” which features a dozen dizzying, rapid-fire performances, are churning, exclamatory productions that make a convincing argument that the Northwest is as much a hip-hop hotbed now as it was a punk hub in the ’80s. (Album release party with Onry Ozzborn, Xperience, Wildcard, Candidt, Everybody Weekend, and Calvin Johnson, Thurs., Nov. 13, Rendezvous)
