Child Actor & August Fanon - Here and Here
When two underground beatmaking stalwarts link up, they almost always strike gold. Last November, the wholly unique and highly-asteemed Child Actor was asked to perform his first beat set at HiFi at the Arcade, a budding Connecticut-based space to share and celebrate music with like-minded hiphopheads. When putting the word-out to the ever-prolific August Fanon - a solidifed legend in the genre - he not only agreed, but stunned the room with a career-spanning journey of memories and beats, sparking an even greater friendship between the two producers and laying the foundation to the split instrumental beat tape that we have today.
The resulting project plays like a record with a dictinct A and B side; Child Actor and Fanon opting not to bounce beats off each other but delivering their own unique projects to create something whole, with each powerfully complimenting the other, deep diving into their own respective sonic influences and forms of expression. Any lover of the momentous, history-engraved abstract hiphop wave we’re riding right now could listen to this tape blindfolded and tell you who they were listening to; Fanon and Child Actor’s sounds are remarkably their own, yet they’re always pushing their own envelope.
Like a tightly woven tapestry of fleeting ideas and memories, Child Actor’s second-only instrumental project plays like a dreamscape, moving swiftly between one “rhythmical process going on in the head” to the next, where a beat’s negative space is just as vital as the melody itself. He puts the human touch beyond all else between every oddly chopped bassline or brittle piece of percussion, every loop deep-in-groove but extraterrestrial, like you’re walking with him through uncanny valley.
Fanon’s side feels comparatively fiery and intentionally present, letting his loops lull you into a deceitful trance before roping you in with the next. Sometimes his instantly-recognisable drums reinforce the sample, and sometimes he’ll let the source speak for itself like a self-proclaimed “international art thief”, weaving together deep soul, prog or krautrock in the way he does best. There’s a clear intensity to almost every beat here, interpolating evocative vocal snippets of modern-day warfare and man-mad atrocities, always using his music as a vessel for something greater.
But ultimately, they both tell their own their own sonic story in a way that feels completely unique to them, not in competition but in both striving for their own way of expression, back-to-back just like the night in November that borne this excellent beat tape.