fea­turing first track off of emancipator’s upcoming album “safe in the steep cliffs”!

ARTIST: eman­cip­ator (aka douglas appling)
GENRE: blissed out beats that make you think about your ex-​girlfriends
WWW: eman​cip​ator​music​.com /​myspace​.com/​e​m​a​n​c​i​p​a​tor
eman­cip­ator — nevergreen.mp3
SUMMARY: where to start. i was in a musical dump. listening to old records of days gone by. dj shadow, rjd2, hand­some boy mod­eling school, among others. i was hanging out on last​.fm, trying to find some­thing new and awe­some that would get me out of this bored-​of-​all-​the-​fucking-​music out there rut, and there he was (and i totally don’t mean to be gay about this), but after count­less hours of pageviews and skip­ping tracks, i dis­covered this obscure dude named eman­cip­ator, who had to go to japan to release his debut album (soon it will be cold enough, 2008) on the nujabes’ label, hyde out record­ings. when i pressed play, i started hearing things that i had always wanted to hear.

safe in the steep cliffs — new album out january 19^th!

in music, everyone always talks about new sounds, new arrange­ments, new ways of put­ting music that hasn’t been done before. emancipator’s music is some­thing like that, but there’s a famili­arity to it. it’s melodic, like nujabes, but not quite jazzy. it’s got beats, but it isn’t like dj shadow. it’s soothing, but it ain’t deep house. it’s turntables and sampling, but it ain’t rjd2. if i were to com­pare him to anyone, it would prob­ably be meta­form, but even then, that’s a poor com­par­ison. you’ll notice that his fans (including me) have a lot of trouble with what he’s doing here, and because of that, listening to that debut (over and over and over again) was an amazing musical experience.

i can clearly remember the first time i heard cindy kao’s voice sampled on the opening track of that album, i knew that this would be golden. then, i was floored. i heard thao nguyen get into bliss­fully sing-​song ramble on “when i go” and that just cemented the fact that this would go on to become my favourite album in forever, and con­tinues to be to this day. an indie folk song­stress like her on an album that would gen­er­ally be cat­egor­ized as instru­mental hip hop. wow. incredible.

beyond that, the guy’s all about the music too. he’s got his whole debut album up for free play on his web­site, and is giving away the first single off of it as a free down­load. all this, and his next album is about to drop next week with a street date of january 19^th, 2010, and will be touring starting in feb­ruary — check tourd­ates on his web­site. hope­fully, you guys can all go out there and sup­port him.

hell, even if his new album is shitty as hell and doesn’t have the magical fairy vocal samplings, i’m going to be a fan for life based on the debut alone.

here are some you­tube videos from tracks from his debut to get you ready for his sopho­more effort:

eman­cip­ator — when i go (incred­ible vocals by thao nguyen)

eman­cip­ator — eve

eman­cip­ator — with rainy eyes