Trails
Trails & Co.
Living Systems Records
Click to hear: “The Stick Figure Fellowship”
Trails & Co., the new EP from the hip hop duo Trails, sounds like a collection of tracks they didn’t have room for on their debut LP, Fits & Starts, from earlier this year. That’s not to say the work here is weaker than the material on that release. They’ve just got more good shit than they know what to do with.
DJ and producer Josh Thelin (theLin) creates six more pieces of funky, imaginative ear candy. MC Syn the Shaman sounds tougher than ever. This collaboration is really starting to gel.
Episode 1 of “The Stick Figure Fellowship,” the first track, makes you wish the next five were Episodes 2 through 6. Syn tells a story from the perspective of a crooked cop trying to nail a character who sounds suspiciously like himself. “Calling all cars, calling all cars / got a suspect spotted and he’s made out of bars / with a little round head, a backpack and a stick / Not clear what his crime is but he’s slippery and quick.”
On “Posterize You,” one of three cuts with fellow rapper ALT., theLin lays down a buttery guitar-and-keys sample you can’t believe you’ve never heard before. The Richard Pryor quote at the end (“Life is not a big joke. It’s a series of eight or nine thousand little jokes. You know, all lined up in a row.”) is perfect. The snippets of narration from a documentary about Rasputin in “Rasputin’s Castration” (featuring Ill By Instinct) are likewise inspired.
If you dug Fits & Starts, get your hands on this EP. Haven’t heard Trails yet? Same advice.
— Chris Busby
Trails’ Web site is trailsounds.com.
