Bleep

Can’t resist a good beat down at the Alpha Pup works, can they? The Los Angeles label - whose catalogue includes releases from Busdriver and Daedelus - give us another selection of chill jams, and this time they’re on a reissue flex. Hive’s record Working With Sound first came out in 1998, around the time when J Dilla and Madlib were beginning to establish themselves, and there’s certainly a shared emphasis on vibe-heavy beats here. However, Working With Sound is far more adventurous than, say, Donuts, with Hive often detouring into jazz or murky boom-bap. Indeed, the way Hive moves between styles here is reminiscent of DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing.