Download: Epstein's Post-Punky Beach Jam "Seashells & Starfish"
Plenty of YIMBY pixels have already been spilled on Roberto Carlos Lange, whose project Helado Negro greeted us two years ago as a breezy summertime treat. His alter-alter-ego Epstein keeps HN's hazy asphalt steam heat, but trades the fluttering guitars for trunk-rattling 808s, and his vulnerable warble for vinyl crackle. Epstein turns Lange's love of hip-hop—birthed on Boogie Down Productions and Buffy the Human Beat Box—into a reverb-soaked, psychedelic throb. His recent album Sealess Sea (out now via Asthmatic Kitty) is built on record loops filtered through his trusty MPC—he describes his composition style as "grab a random stack and see what could get built." But the record's bubbly, gauzy feel feels more at home with contemporary loop-mutants like Panda Bear or Black Moth Super Rainbow. The humid, soupy drums on "Seashells & Starfish" are so heavily distended that the whole piece rolls over into post-punk territory, a gorgeous place where This Heat meets Prefuse 73.
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