Model Home One Year

Otherworldly beat science from the currently vibrant Washington DC underground. The heavily processed MCing of NappyNappa weaves in and out of the skewed electronics and stuttering percussion of Patrick Cain. Loosely affiliated with the Future Times crew and featuring contributions from Dolo Percussion (aka Max D). In the duo's own words 'a collaborative experiment in liberated sound, vision, and performance', Model Home orbit in their own universe, with glimmers of light from distant galaxies refracted in their sound. Some moments are reminiscent of DJ Screw, MF Doom or a mangled dub sound system cassette that's been left in the sun for too long, the grainy collage backing tracks closer to the sick midwest drones of Aaron Dilloway than any modern beatmakers, but this is implicitly it's own thing. The spirit of free improvisation pervades the tracks, a sound evolving from two artistic sensibilities bouncing off each other without a set plan and creating a third pathway to unknown worlds. One Year compiles tracks from 8 different self-released mixtapes made during an intense initial 12 month period of musical activity that birthed the project. Approached with the same archival sensibility that Disciples has brought to albums-that-never-were from Black Lodge, Bogdan Raczynski and His Name As Alive, but with the idea of creating a framework to present an underground NOW sound. A Jamaican style 'showcase' album for these outliers from the District of Columbia. Although without sonic precedent it somehow makes a kind of perverse sense that these sounds have emerged from the same place that birthed Dischord Records and Trouble Funk. Model Home reached the attention of Disciples via the writer Mike McGonigal, the force behind essential music periodicals Chemical Imbalance, Yeti, the newly launched Maggot Brain, and sleevenote writer for our series of unearthed His Name Is Alive teenage home recordings. He opined that had cult UK label On-U Sound started today, this is the kind of stuff they would be releasing, which immediately had our interest well and truly piqued, and indeed perhaps a 21st century interpretation of the still unique and indefinable hybrid sounds of New Age Steppers or Mark Stewart & The Maffia makes some kind of sense when trying to swim in the slipstream of Nappa's cosmic logic and beautifully abstracted flow, the spliced-and-diced loops of Cain adding hook-laden carpets of texture, just check the quasi-gamelan bed of 'Cheek To The Matrix' or the Patrick Conway synth soundtrack through a fuzz pedal thrust of 'Livin' In A Treehouse'. McGonigal also says: 'It's dubby and weird, electronics and voice -- experimental rap of interest to fans of Sleaford Mods, Roll Deep Crew, the Fall, 'Metal Box,' etc.'