A$AP Rocky - Long. Live. A$AP.

Album review

January 16, 2013

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“Long. Live. A$AP” begins with a peal of thunder. It could easily represent the explosion of hype that erupted following A$AP Rocky‘s early releases and has been rumbling away ever since in anticipation of this release, his debut album proper following the huge critical success of his “Live. Love. A$AP” mixtape. Yet that rumble has had to be maintained for longer than was expected. Following an eye-watering $3m deal with RCA, the album has been put back again and again, making his nomination for the BBC’s Sound of 2012 poll seem amusingly premature rather than the obvious choice it appeared to be at the time.

So now that it’s finally here, does it fulfil the hype and justify the delay? To begin with, easily. The opening title track showcases all his best attributes with considerable aplomb: a mighty, sure-footed beat strides across the icy landscape of the verses, before taking an unexpected detour into a surprisingly tender, soulful chorus that provides excellent contrast to the braggadocio that usually emanates from his gold grill. Last year’s classic single ‘Goldie’ (number 23 in our best tracks of 2012 list) follows next, and remains possibly the best of the Houston-influenced chopped and screwed efforts he’s put out.

A nice portion of “Live. Love. A$AP” was produced by Clams Casino, and New Jersey’s finest makes a welcome return on two tracks here. ‘LVL’ is one of the choicest cuts on the record, an utterly gorgeous, laid-back beat which the combative verses only slightly jar with (“I see dead people, I need dead people / Lord Pretty Flacko, bitch, I behead people” being one incongruous example). Clammy Clams’ other track follows hot on its heels, but while Santigold holds up her end on the chorus of ‘Hell’, the quicksand beat sounds a little like it fell off the back of Salem’s last album rather than a lost DJ Screw tape. A slight disappointment.

‘Pain’, featuring bullseye guest verses from Kent and Tube from Overdoz, revolves on two deep, repeating jazz chords which create the spaced-out, purple drank-guzzling vibe that Rocky languors so naturally in. He fares less well on the faster-paced ‘Fuckin’ Problems’ though, which suffers slightly from having too many guests barging for attention.

None of those guests are as unexpected (nor as unwelcome) as Skrillex though, who produces the tedious EDM cash-in ‘Wild for the Night’. It’s exactly as bad as you’d imagine; full of irritating bleeps and bluster, it puts you in mind of a bratty kid that keeps getting up in the night after he’s been put to bed, firing a toy laser gun with a maniacal laugh that you know is going to turn into a wet-faced wail any second.

Fortunately it’s followed by the most straight-forward hip-hop track on the record, ‘1 Train’. While it again features a raft of guest appearances, including Joey Bada$$, Kendrick Lamar and Action Bronson, the Wu-style beat served up by Hit-Boy (who also produced ‘Goldie’) gives each rapper more room to breathe – room that’s best exploited by Danny Brown’s ludicrously entertaining verse where he describes himself as an “Adonis smokin’ chronic ’bout to vomit gin and tonic”.

However, the album slowly tails off after this. ‘Fashion Killa’ comes off as a cynical shout-out designed to blag some free designer duds, while an apparent attempt to showcase a more reflective side on ‘Phoenix’ is slightly marred by the constant gun-shots. Luckily the moody ‘Jyode’ manages to round thing off nicely, proving that A$AP Rocky is at his most dope when he sounds doped up. The bonus tracks on the deluxe edition? Well, apart from some nice bleepy bits on ‘Angels’ and a rapid-fire, curiously-accented verse from A$AP Ferg on ‘Ghetto Symphony’ (perhaps surprisingly, one of the only appearances from the wider A$AP Mob) there’s not much on offer.

One of the first things that struck me when I first heard of A$AP Rocky was how similar his name sounded to Def Jux veteran Aesop Rock, but it only takes a few seconds of exposure to make you realise he’s aiming for something very different. A forthcoming support slot for Rihanna is a good indication that his ambition is way beyond simply becoming a cult figure – he has his sights trained right on the top.

Does this album suggest he’ll get there? Well, as good as it is, it’s not nearly as accomplished as Kendrick Lamar’s “Good Kid M.A.A.D City”, and doesn’t massively improve upon his breakthrough mixtape either. There are some superb moments, and his delivery is generally on the money, but lyrically he doesn’t take the listener anywhere they haven’t been a thousand times before. His $3m deal may yet prove to be a shrewd investment, but if he wants to be the new King of New York he’s got more work to do, especially with whippersnappers like Joey Bada$$ at his heels. The acronym A$AP supposedly has several meanings, the most amusing one being “Acronysm Symbolising Any Purpose”. A$AP Rocky has the potential to become a superstar, but also the potential to fuck it up. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to stand for “Almost Succeeded – Another Pretender”.

Previous in Album review

Pop deaths are a fairly regular occurence - musician dies, briefly tops the trending charts on Twitter, everyone listens to their albums for a few days, fade to black, repeat. Most of the time the experience, I'm slightly ashamed to admit, leaves me pretty cold. Adam Yauch, Donna Summer, Etta James...great music, and sad to think they're gone, but I didn't know them and (this sounds harsh) I never expected to hear any great music from them again so didn't see it as a huge personal loss. That may be a selfish perspective, but it's honest. People die every day, most of them after a far less pleasant lives than those enjoyed by, say, Robin Gibb or Davy Jones. Granted, anyone who's acheived great things should be honoured and celebrated, but I don't understand when people get genuinely distraught over people dying who they've never met, because they made a some decent records a few decades ago. But the death of Broadcast's Trish Keenan really did affect me. I was at work (on my own in a 2nd-hand DVD shop) and immediately went numb. Then that numbness thawed into a miserable bewilderment. I spent the rest of the day playing Broadcast albums, records which are among my favourite ever written, as the tears just about clung on to my lower eyelids. The tragedy of losing such a talented musician at such a young age seemed inexplicable (who the fuck gets pneumonia in Australia?), but it was a more selfish thought that really hit me: there would never be another Broadcast album to look forward to. Because Broadcast were (are?) one of those bands whose every release was eagerly anticipated, chiefly because you ended up enjoying each one for different reasons. The pleated psychedelia of "The Noise Made By People", the wintry splendour of "Haha Sound", the infectious electronics of "Tender Buttons", the hallucinatory cut-ups of 2009's collaboration with The Focus Group (aka Julian House); each was a completely distinct and perfectly crafted work in its own right, but yet also contained all the classic Broadcast elements: vintage instruments, the odd twisted rhythmic excursion, and, of course, Trish Kennan's voice, strikingly clear in tone and yet often feeling curiously reserved. You itched to find out what they would do next, mostly because you knew it'd be something new, and you knew you'd love it. When Keenan died, the thrill of that anticipation was gone forever, and however selfish it is: that hurt. Or it did. Last year James Cargill, Keenan's musical and romantic partner, announced that he was working on some recordings they'd made together to soundtrack a new film "Berberian Sound Studio". The film is set in the 1970s and focuses on the psycholgical unravelling of a sound recordist from Dorking who takes a job in Italy working on a lurid horror flick. Perfect Broadcast territory, really - curious tropes of the past as seen through an experimental modern filter. That anticipation was back again. Does the finished article satisfy it? Essentially, yes. It's impossible to judge "Berberian Sound Studio" against other Broadcast albums though, mainly because it doesn't feel like an album. There are 39 tracks in total, some just a few seconds long and many simply reinterpretating the primary motifs, not dissimilar to the obscure soundtracks and library recordings the band took so much inspiration from. It kicks off with a descending auto-harp scale, similar to the one on 'Lullaby' from The Wicker Man soundtrack (which Broadcast already paraphrased on 'I Found The F', the opening track on "Tender Buttons"). The theme for proceedings - Broadcast meets cult 70s horror - is thus writ large early on, albeit in spidery handwriting. The first track proper, 'The Equestrian Vortex', is more akin to something from "Broadcast & The Focus Group" - an off-kilter instrumental that sounds like it's been sampled from some obscure prog record made by a practicing warlock who only exists in Julian Cope's mind. The third track, 'Beautiful Hair', is a dreamlike death march, featuring Morricone-esque toy-box arpeggios and a backing rhythm that is somewhere between a disassociative-dosed convalescent quietly barking gibberish and a violin playing a single note, using a bow strung with the hair of an ancient corpse. 'Teresa, Lark of Ascension' is perhaps the highlight, and the closest we come to a 'song'. It is utterly gorgeous, and one of the only tracks to clearly feature Keenan's voice, which generally only appears in flashes, heavily painted over by other sounds. Here, her singing is refracted over a chiming ostinato and a surprisingly warm and lulling organ. Slowly everything dissipates, like mist clearing from a Hammer Horror cemetery, and the organ takes over the lead, before delicately handing it back again for a genuinely affecting, gentle coda. A few bits of the album are similarly (and surprisingly) delicate, so in order to remind you that you're supposed to be listening to a horror soundtrack Cargill chucks in a number of grisly sound effects. Sudden bursts of garbled human speech, stangulated seizures, shattering glass, bloody thuds and good 'ol female screaming all pop up, while 'A Goblin' features someone speaking in tongues while a kettle approaches the boil somewhere in the seventh circle of hell. Elsewhere classic horror sounds are common, such as a slice of melodramatic church organ or haunting choral pieces sculpted out of Keenan's recordings. Getting the soundtrack to feel so authentic is an impressive achievement, and Cargill elaborated on his methods in a fascinating recent interview with FACT, revealing he used "mostly mellotron – its presets are pre-recorded tape loops so it inherently has that sound…I also used a dictaphone to record the autoharp and cymbals. I was conscious of the pastiche aspect to making a soundtrack like this, but I couldn’t see a way round it in the end…Gilderoy is working in an Italian sound studio in 1976 so I had to be considerate of that". The line between pastiche and tribute, reverence and rip-off, is a pretty fine one, but suffice to say he refrains from straying beyond the better side of it. So, how does it rank alongside Broadcast's other records? Well, it doesn't - it's not an album. While it has an introduction, it has no narrative or ending and the brevity of many tracks makes it seem a little bitty when consumed as a whole. Like much "hauntological" music it feels more like a document than anything else, a memory of a place that never existed. As a tool for coming to terms with the bizarre grief that I feel for a musician I never met, a feeling that usually confuses me when observed in others, it's completely successful. There's a reverence here, especially on the aforementioned 'Teresa, Lark of Asenscion', that makes it feel like the music that plays as you exit a crematorium, with that peculiar, amiguous mixture of total, unbearable heartbreak and the thought - "I wish to hell they were still here, but thank heavens they existed in the first place". Essentially, with Keenan's voice often shadowy and always wordless, it feels a bit like Broadcast's ghost. There are rumours that, with a seperate album having been in production while this soundtrack was being composed, there could be another Broadcast release later in the year. If true, then the anticipation the band's always inspired lives on. If not, then '"Berberian Sound Studio" is as fitting a triubute as you could ask for.