DJ Krush

With each record he releases, DJ Krush pulls himself further away from the pure instrumental hip-hop he unleashed with albums such as Meiso. The simplicity of his tripping beats have progressed into abstract madness and have exploded into something altogether new in The Message at The Depth. Looking at the guest MCs alone should give you an indication as to where Krush is headed musically. In past efforts, he was working with straight-ahead hip-hop lyricists like CL Smooth and Mos Def. Now we see the Japanese producer fuelling rhymes for the now-defunct Anti-Pop Consortium and the Anticon crew. DJ Krush's last offering, the mediocre Zen, was a bit of a disappointment for someone that looked to be branching out into something truly amazing. This record is a step in the right direction, in the sense that it fills in the gaps of expectations that were left unfulfilled last time around. Cuts like "The Blackhole" are along the same lines of Amon Tobin's hip-hop-inspired numbers and "Taki No Tabiji" is the haunting Japanese lyricism we've been craving ever since Milight dropped five years ago. This is a promising release from Krush, and the one some might have been anticipating, reassuring us that the DJ is still following the correct path.