August the Creep sheds his rhyming pal Horton the Irrelevant in his recent solo instrumental effort The Creep, a previously unreleased collections of songs he created over 2002-05. The results range from bracing and antic to pleasantly calm, and on "The Freak Outside" he samples a broad aural palette.
The sly, shifting mash-up of the raw and the cooked includes sand-papery maracas, what appears to be backwards sitar, a moody wash of keyboards, and a tiny snatch of narcotized vocals. (I assume they're sampled from elsewhere, but perhaps that's not the case.) Everything oozes and flutters and keens atop a heartbeat rhythmic track that pulses along with implacable certainty. A couple edits are startling abrupt, but that's okay.
They make it very clear that August's mixing strategy doesn't include zoning out on lulling Kruder & Dorfmeister-style Euro-dub. Could Horton rap over this? No doubt. But the Creep travels the spaceways just fine all by his lonesome.
An MP3 of the track are available in the related downloads at right. For a limited time over the holiday season, Horton and August are offering free downloads of The Creep along with their full-length collaboration Strange Passengers. They are collecting donations for these free downloads (through a paypal link on their MySpace page, with the funds to be used in the production of their forthcoming album, set for release sometime next summer. The duo are also performing with Bro DJ at the King Club on Sunday, December 23
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