wisdwm - MISCTAPE

You’d never know meeting wisdwm in all his humility and selflessness that he’s one of the best beatmakers in Australia. When Threatnique’s Beat Heads show first broke through the airwaves this year, I was so floored by the first beat he played that I had a hard time even comprehending the rest. wisdwm just had this certain swing and off-kilter-ness to his sound, warm and inviting but kinda drunk in the same way ?uestlove played with precision and sloppiness on Voodoo. Having gone through some of the backcatalogue and coming in at 52mins, I actually think MISCTAPE is a perfect place to start when diving into his sound; diverse and all-encompassing, slowly moving from one influence to the next like a more focused instrumentally-hiphop driven Third Side of Tape. Despite being a self-described “miscellaneous tape of sounds,” the whole project moves so fluidly, never ruminating too long on one idea as it glides through wistfully jazzy moments, sweet and soulful rnb and more direct moments like the sea-side cruise of ‘always there’ and the intense footwork of ‘tradin secrets’ in its final moments. There’s an equally sleepy and hard-hitting energy to almost every set of drum patterns he lays down here, like the completely off-the-grid kick and snare combos on ‘hypnotize’ or the scattered and sporadic ‘dodgin’; everything feels so textured and deeply layered, but never claustrophobic. The whole tape feels like a deep dive into wisdwm’s various sounds and styles, what he loves and what he loves making, and it’s that self-portrayal and vulnerability I love in a lot tapes just like this one. I can only hope he continues to make more, because what he left us with feels anything but miscellaneous.

KEY BEAT: amazng - even with the drums being so steady, there’s something about the almost deep house-y chords paired up against such light airy vocals that lifts the track to such psychedelic and weirdly-sinister heights. Easily one of the best here and one of my favourite beats from him without a doubt.