billy woods – Aethiopes On Aethiopes, billy woods reestablishes his strengths as a storyteller, with help from producer Preservation’s experimentally jazzy beats. By now, woods has cemented himself as one of hip hop’s greatest writers, and his brooding yet clever introspection sounds especially powerful over Preservation’s musical backdropping. Samples of pianos will twinkle across some tracks, and pound discordantly on others, while electric guitars ring and horns blow. By the time the harmonica enters the equation, the beats here are unparalleled. It is an enveloping atmosphere completed by excellent percussion, which moves between hand drums, full kits, and shuffling jangles … Continued
Places called Babylon don’t usually meet excellent ends: Tom Lin on Babylon, South Dakota
In the midst of his small office on the fourth floor of the EPB, looking out onto the Stanley Museum of Art, surrounded by two well-populated book shelves and a Kym Day painting of a cowboy feeding a horse Lo Mein, Tom Lin reclines in his swivelback chair and invites me to take a seat.
