Exit To Riverside

Justin de Nobrega from Cape Town, South Africa is experimental hip-hop artist The Considerate Builders Scheme. He has released IDM albums as Seven Ark on Neo Ouija, Detroit Underground and Colony. With Exit to Riverside, he is combining his love for hip-hop with a constant need for experimentation, delivering a meticulous, personal interpretation of hip-hop beats with a special eye towards construction and design. If you listen to as much of the Neptunes as you do experimental electronica, something like this is bound to happen - a blend of hard-hitting hip-hop production, combined with a love of all things electronic, and you've got the building blocks for a newer, more progressive electronic sound. Following the sound of Prefuse 73 and Timbaland's instrumentals, Exit to Riverside clutters, stomps and slides it's way through it's 11 tracks, from the dense funk of And Five and the robot-drawl of Back Space to the street bounce of Busted and the fuzzy head-nod of The Project. This is hip hop that's as much about where we've been as it is about a deep- seated appreciation of modern electronic music and the continual progression of the art form. So The Considerate Builders Scheme stands only accidentally - due to their common South African origin - in company with grime, but evidently in the tradition of artists such as Clatterbox or Beans of the Anti Pop Consortium. Though this is assuredly a hip-hop album, there are no rhymes like Snoop or Kanye, but there are enough beats and risky diatribes to satisfy. It's an album to sing along to, to nod your head and to dance to. Combination. 2006.