Gesaffelstein & Aleph: Electro's Yeezy

Gesaffelstein released a new album this past week, and I had no idea was in the works.  "Aleph" is a bizarre 14-track collection of music that carries Gesaffelstein's dark power away from dance-floor ready electro-tech into the arenas of trap and hip hop.  The best way to describe it actually vis a vis Kanye West's most recent album Yeezus (which fittingly Gesaffelstein helped produce).  With Yeezus, Kanye West continued his exodus out of the "rap game" and into electronic music.

With Aleph, Gesaffelstein has done the reverse.  He's taken his signature dark gritty electronic sound, and hybridized it with elements of hip hop.  It's as though Gesaffelstein is trying to reinvent himself as the king of a new breed of electronic music that borrows from modern hip hop--like he wants to be the "Yeezy" of electronic music.  The cover art for Aleph certainly indicates this desire.  It looks like a the lovechild between the gold patterning of Jay Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne album, and Kanye West's austere Yeezus album, only with circuit boards instead of filigree.

Watch the Throne

+

Yeezus

=

Aleph

Cover art aside, I just don't love this album.  As a starting point, look at the BPM counts on each track:

1. 106BPM: Out Of Line
2. 71BPM: Nameless
3. 102BPM: Destinations
4. 101BPM: Obsession
5. 94BPM: Hellifornia
6. 90BPM: Wall Of Memories     
7. 130BPM: Duel                                  
8. 117BPM: Values                      
9. 95BPM: Perfection                 
10. 109BPM: Pursuit                          
11. 81BPM: Aleph
12. 88BPM: Piece Of Future          
13. 103BPM: Hate Or Glory              
14. 107BPM: Trans                        

The album doesn't really manage to find a comfortable niche to work in.  Spread between 71 and 130 BPM, Aleph it is unfortunately beyond what I would call "eclectic," and comfortably in the realm of "scattered."  None of the tracks sit in that golden zone of 123 - 128 Gesaffelstein did so well in, and in the teen count we only have Values (117), a track that's too morose and soft to be a dance-floor banger. 

The abundance of tracks in the 100 BPM range really bring the album down.  Slower, heavy beats take Gesaffelstein's signature dark sound--which at 120bpm range made for exciting dance tracks--into somethings that feels cumbersome and emotionally overwrought for an electronic album.  Interludes like Nameless, Perfection and Wall of Memories try to give the album emotional depth, but register flat and out of place in an album that's so scattered and forcible.

Hellifornia--the idiot lovechild of techno and 90's hip hop--is a droning, sterile hip hop beat glazed with the whine of synthesizers.  It's terrible.

Duel, at 130bpm, is the album's black sheep.  It's too fast, and too bizarre.  Jittery electronic digeridoos, ominous frantic chants, and plastic synth that pulses dangerous across the entire makes for a track that is   almost as bizarre as it is terrible.  Seriously terrible.  If autistic robots took cocaine and had an orgy, it might sound as bad as this track.

Other tracks are just decent.  Pursuit tries to scare and excite us with spook-show sounds and deep space synthesizers, but the builds and drop are formulaic and uninteresting.  It's ride we've all been on before.  Out of Line features church bells, nonsense vocals, and even a tribal beat with chanting.  But even with all of these gimmicks, it doesn't do anything for me.  It's boring.

There are a few bright patches.  Trans is excellent--a real Gesaffelstein classic.  Hate or Glory is bombastic and self-possessed (it belongs on Yeezus) but it's a decent merger of hip hop and techno that covers some new ground, and is grounded in an excellent beat.  But overall, this is only a decent album undeserving of the hype it's getting.  

Aleph: Nothing revolutionary.  

The Good: Trans

The OK: Hate or Glory

The Bad: Hellifornia