Review
Aesop Rock
Spirit World Field Guide

Spirit World Field Guide is Aesop Rock’s first full-length in a few years. He’s been busy in the meantime, working on Malibu Ken and other projects, but Spirit World Field Guide has been a slow-building project. And it’s just that: a project.

At 21 tracks in total, this is a psychedelic hip-hop adventure that takes the listener to new lands. It’s filled with dense imagery, new landscapes and spacey yet poignant beats. For a record with so many songs, it’s impressively tight. Usually a hip-hop record (hell, any genre) gets bloated somewhere after the fifteenth song, but the concept here is united. There’s a method to this madness. Aesop Rock’s established wordplay and tongue twister rhymes sets the stage, but the story feels more linear; less random and chaotic. When things do start to blend together too much, short jazzy tracks like “1 to 10” or “Side Quest” serve as seques that breathe new life to offset the lulls.

Right at the start, “Button Masher” is indicative of the overall spirit: Aesop Rock’s spitfire delivery bounces and flows over an otherworldly bass with an off kilter beat and an understated groove. That groove continues into the next track, “Dog at the Door” which takes his classic abstract delivery style but counters it with extra musical flair that truly complements the material instead of overwhelming it. It’s really easy to imagine a lot of this album played on live instrumentation, especially the bass.

There’s a whole lot to say about a record this big and this dense. But some high points are that banging, distorted beat in “Holy Waterfall,” the recurring culinary references buried in abstract dreamscapes, such as “swimming through the aus jous” as Aesop Rock raps over a reverb-heavy beat in “Crystal Sword.” There’s certainly abstraction at play, but it elicits new reaction when you really stop and listen instead of bobbing your head with the flow. “Coveralls” has some ridiculous alliteration.

Like I just said, there’s a lot going on here. But it’s unified by progressive, consistent bass grooves and beats that push forward but with some detours and circular paths along that journey. Spirit World Field Guide is one of the most fitting titles of the year, as this is a psychedelic hip-hop quest. Then, once you’re fully immersed in the dream, it comes to an abrupt stop and we’re jarred awake, back to reality.