Stoop is an artist who wants to mean something else to the craft. This is a musician extraordinaire, creating a backdrop of some of the most fascinating audio dockets you might hear. Each has a tale, each a purpose. His latest collection aims to bring a smile to your face, and a slew of other emotions. This is Cratehead.Â
The moment this album opened, I could associate it with several parts of Just Mercy (2019). The Origin opens the soothing jazz and lo-fi feels, while the vinyl scratch holds the back. It is an instrumental frenzy for quite some time, especially the piano run coming in like fairy dust.
Daybreaks and Heartaches repurposes the background to become something richer. If you’re listening to it with the cinematic touch it has, there are some incredible transitions in these songs that make Stoop a superstar. He knows how to construct the beat around the melody and vice versa improbably well. The joyous mysteries of the lo-fi world come in with Dreamland, and create the textures needed to truly experience it all. You might confuse it all with a loop sometimes, but there are more elements that make it ensuing and rewarding. Cherry Blossom gets in the picturesque frames with a much slower tempo, crafting something that soothes as well as excites. These are bass lines and melodies that infuse into one another effortlessly. It is this element of bringing spatial definition together with melodic parts that encapsulate a theme without any hints.
The offshoot jazzy requiems of Breathe are what make Stoop so unique. It sounds like something MF DOOM would use as a background, yet has tones that are a syncopation to the tangible nature of this song. The Minnesota based musician brings quite the spread with Mystic City. It is a turbid tale, yet told all with his ariose interceptions. Treating it all with a new altitude, this musician wants you to understand the range of the collection he has put across. I can see these songs fit into the Micheal B Jordan movie very well, especially dramatic transition scenes.
The tenacity in creating thematic escapes that meld into the silence so well is tantalising to hear. Stoop is an artist that respects the legacy, yet creates something that extracts from his own culture. It titrates from an essence that he can derive with his simplistic yet sophisticated choice of notes and beats.
This is easily his best collection, though his singles do have some sorcery by themselves. The collection accents his style and the way he presents these involvements with quite some panache. You can listen to his music in the links above and be sure to follow him for some interesting voyages into the lo-fi realm!