Hudson Mohawke — B.B.H.E — Album Review
Experimental | Dance | Electronic
Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Music
This is officially my first review that follows the creation of my brand new Instagram, created solely for my written work. If you’d like to visit, or give me a follow, simply look out for @joe_boothby_writer on Instagram.
August is showing to be a relatively scarce month in terms of exciting new albums (which allowed me the perfect opportunity to begin refreshing my socials), but with it being one of the warmest weekends of 2020 thus far, I definitely wanted to have something musical to accompany it.
What I ended up stumbling across was the newest release from Glaswegian producer Hudson Mohawke. Having not listened to the producer before, what ultimately drew me in to his fourth album was indeed the album cover. One look at it, and I knew I was in for an experience that was at least a little bit experimental.
And given how the record started off, I was at first skeptical of just how this experimentation was put forward. Following the solid, and more accessible introduction that was “Brooklyn”, the second track “Mandarania” was the biggest head-scratcher for me. The rhythm on that track was so overly chopped-up, that it completely took me out of the moment that the opener created. Oddly enough, however, a similarly chopped-up beat can be found later on the album, in the form of “Wellpark”, that I actually ended up enjoying considerably.
I guess that while the album as a whole left me with a divided feeling initially, it ultimately comes down to varying degrees of experimentation, that are sporadically spread across the project. And unfortunately, I felt the need to take some points off hypothetically due to the disjointed construction of B.B.H.E.
Despite having a total of 14 tracks on this project, its overall run time doesn’t even exceed 30 minutes. And this is largely due to the rapid-fire nature of many of the tracks individually. There are actually a few interlude-type tracks on here that felt like they they could’ve easily been tacked onto the end of another track, but their individuality meant that I ended up deeming them unpurposeful and uninteresting.
And while, yes indeed, there are many enjoyable bops on this track too. Almost every one of the like left me with the feeling that they would sound even better with a seperate artist vocalising over them. So, while enjoyable, pretty much everything on B.B.H.E feels somewhat skeletal.
So while the best of what this project has to offer did succeed in providing me with a satisfactory accompaniment to this very hot weekend, I still don’t feel that I’d be jumping at the chance to delve into whatever Hudson has up his sleeve for the future. Unless of course, a collaboration is on its way.
Favourite Tracks: Wellpark | Liquid Heat | Monte Fisto
Least Favourite Track: Mandarania
Warp Records
