aerate + bao - The Good Shepherd

“All the same minerals you’ll find in the earth, you’ll find in your body.”

In an attempt to give thanks, I think aerate and Benja have created something even bigger than what they were striving for. This beautifully immersive, almost-hour-long tape plays out like a creation story of sorts, or a cycle of life, all the way through from its first minimalist waves of harmony to its last crystal-blue drops of euphoria as the cycle repeats on itself. The Good Shepherd feels like a dizzying display of what makes life itself, and mirrors what’s spoken halfway through, reflecting the elements that exist both within and in the space around us. You can feel the course gravel on abrasive spots like Imperishable Crown and the blanketting swells of warm ocean on The Mountains Sing. You can feel the blue flames trickling off the heat of Deep Underground and a slow-moving breeze on Word of Truth. Over many years, they’ve both pushed the envelope so far it’s just about teared to shreds, but the sound design on this album has reached heightened heights even for their standards. Aerate blending walls of sound and sweet melodies with crunching and snapping bits of percussion, all wrapped in static, topped with a great verse from RB (Hashquatch) that feels like a lyrical breath of fresh air. Bao’s grooves move slow, equally ambient and head-knocking like a maximalist take on lowercase, blending vignettes with precision as he takes you from one spiritual hall of mirrors to the next. To second what Taymon said, they seem to share a musical brain that’s become only more in tune as time’s gone on, and in the tracks in the middle here with qoro and egoseed, you hear just how pure this alchemy is. The whole tape amasses to something that feels both like the beginnings of the earth and a future I can’t quite imagine yet, and is a fine offering of greatness from two of the most innovative artists in this scene right now.

KEY BEAT: Smile In Its Trials & Tribulations (feat. qoro) - jumping into these skipping hypnotic drums, these warm synths and fluttering high-end melodies almost seem to sound like birds catching flight. But then it uses the same sounds to move into a deeper groove that absolutely blows me away every time. Just another example of their ability to have these beats progress and breathe like they’re living organisms.