Tim Fite

Brooklyn artist Tim Fite starts off in your face and then gets right under your skin on his latest release. From the very first line ("Fair ain’t so fair, fuckers”), Fite’s biting, witty lyrics are a spicy condiment on the thick sandwich of beats, samples, layered vocals and analogue instrumentation that make up his unique sound. At its most experimental, the album’s bleeps, whirrs and screeches might well resemble the sound of mental illness digitised. Irritating? Occasionally, but this disc is a balm as well, soothing an itch you didn’t even know you had: a hankering for something original, intelligent and scathingly critical of the world’s ruder aspects. And when you stumble across a track that’s actually hook-heavy, well, everything else fades into the background while Fite’s hypnotic vocals and mind-melting digital trickery grip your brain like a vice.