Last Words

The incessant, excellent juvenilia of the WEDIDIT collective (on their website the call number is 911-420-6969) is accompanied in their music by the tolerant millenial's standard answer to which genres he likes. These guys-- producers Shlohmo, R.L. Grime, and Jonwayne, amongst others-- dig (nearly) everything, from chart pop to the Seattle sigh of Elliott Smith, from Timbaland's early aughts production to the agro-rap of Three 6 Mafia and Waka Flocka Flame.

The 22-year old producer Ryan Hemsworth's new EP, Last Words, is another sterling release from the collective, and while it's too scattered to be considered truly excellent, it's another reminder of the way hip-hop and electronic dance music continue to flirt with each other aggressively, like two high school freshmen who have the whole talking-to-each-other thing down and are just starting to reach that exalted next level.

Hemsworth has a history of making beats for such offbeat rap acts as Deniro Farrar and Main Attraktionz, and his work on Last Words skews close to the sounds he's employed in the past.  Though firmly influenced by the fuzzy, webby thud of Clams Casino, Hemsworth has a welcome tendency to drench his soundscapes in rainbow noise like his idol Hudson Mohawke, colorful bits of sound engaging the listener like a light show for purp-heads in a narcotic stupor.

Second track "Colour & Movement", though it's the least danceable of everything here, is particularly impressive. Building around a sample from the German band Notwist, Hemsworth sets up a droning masterpiece, punctuated by schizoid drum machines and followed by an ominous minor keyboard loop which sounds a hell of a lot like "Black and Yellow".

"The Happy Mask Shop",  starts in the same drone sphere as "Colour & Movement", but takes off quickly when Timbaland-like drum machines are added, and drops sound out two-thirds of the way through to make way for the eerie harmonizing of a chorus of lady phantoms. It's haunting, elegant, and heavy, a song to be played in a cathedral that was converted into a nightclub and still hasn't been fully exorcized.

Every so often, Hemsworth gets overly enthusiastic and flips a sample unnecessarily. Even if opener "Charly Wingate" is clearly a tribute to the now forever-incarcerated Max B, the song's use of his ad-libs distracts from what would otherwise be a perfect dance track. But for the most part, the allusions are seamless, as on "Slurring", where Waka's offhand comment on his less-than-sober state from "15th and the 1st" becomes the basis for a maximalist, warped club track, which builds expertly, reaching a peak without ever becoming exhausting or frantic. This is perhaps Hemsworth's principal skill: managing tracks all the way through and avoiding tedium and redundancy.

A set of uniformly solid beats like these also serves as a base upon which other producers can build. The strongest showing comes from Supreme Cuts, whose heady version of "Overthinking" stuffs the original with a whole new set of sounds, obscenely amplifying the highs to create the best club track on the album. But don't count out Baauer, whose already rapidly ascending profile should be boosted even further by his work on "Slurring", as he too converts something that was sitting on the rap-dance margins into a full-on rave track, with massive drum cycles and the undeniable shudder of uncut adrenaline.

The cloudy, purple sound that Hemsworth is working with here has graduated in the past year, as laid-back producers like Shlohmo and more aggressive ones like Rustie compete for the same space. Hemsworth, though not quite in the same category as those guys, marries the two mindsets. In the process he produces an EP that that gives the impression of being greedily, beautifully excessive, while in actuality remains more poised and controlled than something this fun has any right to be.