Under The Scope: Underwrought(Re)Work by Shut ins and The Colony

I’ve only listened to a few albums that weren’t just one artist, but a collective of artist, and to be honest I don’t know how I feel about them as a whole. When Rick Ross began releasing the Self Made series featuring artist from his label, I started to listen to them more, but I still never bought into the gimmick.

It’s already hard enough for me to listen to an album all the way through without skipping a song, so you can only imagine how it is when I listen to a collective album. My problem is there tend to be artist from all over the place on one label. For example, on the MMG label Wale is more of a poetic rapper and Meek Mill is a trap rapper. Transitioning from one to the next throws me off a bit.

The concept of a compilation album, I get. You want to give your fans some variety, and also promote other artist on the label. But a good artist will sell itself, why would you want to sell someone an IPhone when they already have their heart set on android. I’m all about variety and trying new things but at the end of the day music is a business.

When Underwrought(Re)Work came across my twitter feed a few weeks ago, I had the look and the smell of the dreaded compilation album. And it was indeed. I was confused by the title and also who exactly was behind the project.

Meet Lucas Dix of the Jellyfish Brigade, a hip-hop group based out of Portland, OR. He brought a bunch of his friends together and produced a full-length album. They used a unique process to create the project though. Whenever they embarked on a journey to create a new song, the rule was it had to be finished before anybody could leave. Those had to have been some long recording sessions. Lets to take a look at the album.

The Good:

What makes this album unique is smooth flow it maintains throughout the entire project. I’m putting an emphasis on this because of the different artist featured in this album. The project includes members of Portland’s bands Fruition and Horsefeather, and artist from the Portland Hip-Hop collectives Proper Knocks and Neon Autumns.

That is a lot of different personalities in one project, and for them to come together to produce such a free flowing project, that’s art ladies and germs.

Also Ed Curtis did a great job with the production side of the album. Underwrought was actually first released as an instrumental project. Hence the name Underwrought(Re)Work. I enjoyed the vintage hip-hop sound, mixed in with a few new age beats.

Room For Improvement:

There were a few songs that just ended, and when I mean ended, it was abrupt. I don’t like that. They saved themselves because the sudden ending didn’t create too much of an awkward transition, but still.

Also I didn’t like how about half the album-featured songs that were less than 3 minutes long. I’m all for making shorter songs, leaving listener to fill in the blanks, but for a 13 song album I expect only 3 songs to be of that kind. That’s my only bone to pick with this album.

Favorite Song:

Crows Feathers (Fly Right) w/ Stephen Sauer and Hyphon

Overall:

I applaud Dix for this album. I like the concept he used to make the songs, and also the collaboration with other local artist from Portland as well. By doing so, Dix gave other artist exposure as well. Go purchase Underwrought(Re)Works by Shut-ins and The Colony.

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