model home

Saturn In The Basement is Model Home’s second compilation for Disciples, pulling tracks from their self-released Bandcamp mixtapes that exemplify the Washington, D.C. duo’s motto of “experiments in liberated sound”. Far from the more grounded and digestible nature of their 2021 album Both Feet En Th Infinite, these tracks are concussive in their abstractions, blown to a harsh threshold of distorted beats and sunbleached vocals like the cover artwork’s heavy contrast might suggest.

What sounds like a chopped up soul sample starts ‘Pidgin’ off with boom bap-esque beats wrapped up in a lo-fi, grainy aesthetic that wouldn’t be out of place in the outsider hip hop side of the Stones Throw Records catalogue. The ensuing sudden rush of brainfrying synth trickles and incomprehensible vocals, however, throws all expectations and similarities out the window.

There is a dreamlike quality to the impossible architecture of Model Home’s formless sound world. ‘Couch’ finds MC NAPPYNAPPA rapping through a broken radio unit that switches through stations at lightspeed, over mutated electronics from Pat Cain that stretch like rubber. ‘Yard’ is a 13 minute selection of piercing noise and beats that stagger with minds of their own. Japanese post-punk and avant-garde artist Phew adds a more introspective slant on the previously unreleased ‘Naked Intentions’, with crashing waves of synths and skittering percussion.

Model Home’s hip hop concrète is timeless in the sense that it doesn’t adhere to the rules of the temporal domain us mere mortals inhabit, but also in that its unique constructions will remain peerless for years to come.