{"id":172176,"date":"2020-11-18T00:00:16","date_gmt":"2020-11-18T05:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/25yearslatersite.com\/?p=172176"},"modified":"2024-01-25T00:03:14","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T05:03:14","slug":"aesop-rock-spirit-world-field-guide-the-best-rap-album-of-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tvobsessive.com\/2020\/11\/18\/aesop-rock-spirit-world-field-guide-the-best-rap-album-of-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Aesop Rock, Spirit World Field Guide: The Best Rap Album of 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"
As we approach the time of year when list article ideas begin percolating with the hot chocolate, it is becoming clear that despite the turmoil that 2020 delivered throughout public life, and many other branches of the arts shutting down or restructuring, the musical landscape has continued to deliver on some phenomenal releases. From the noisy extravagance of Black Dresses\u2019 magnificent Peaceful as Hell <\/em>and Poppy\u2019s I Disagree<\/em>, to the stunning pop stylings of Rina Sawayama and Carly Rae Jepsen on Sawayama <\/em>and Dedicated Side B<\/em><\/a>, there\u2019s been no shortage of musical standouts. Rap music alone has provided so many stellar albums from Polo G,<\/a> Clipping, Open Mike Eagle<\/a>, Blu & Exile, Logic and Griselda<\/a> projects which could fill a top ten by themselves.<\/p>\n However, despite the plenitude of phenomenal musical releases this year, my own picks for the absolute best have remained unchanged since early June, with early year releases Future Nostalgia<\/em>, Brave Faces Everyone<\/em>, and RTJ4<\/em> securing their spots as the clear standouts in pop, rock and rap records of the year. However, although Spanish Love Songs and Dua Lipa<\/a>\u2019s releases have remained unchallenged into November, Run the Jewels’<\/a> placement at last has a rival in the form of the new Aesop Rock album, Spirit World Field Guide<\/em>.<\/p>\n It’s been some time since we\u2019ve heard from the eccentric producer poet, with his last LP, The Impossible Kid<\/em> one of the best albums of 2016. However, after teasing with a couple of singles, his new project released on November 13 and I\u2019ve listened to little else since. As usual, the album is a virtual one-man show, produced almost entirely by Aesop himself and bearing no features. As with The Impossible Kid<\/em>, the album is a fragmentary exploration of ideas, often to do with his fractured mental state. Each track is more a meditation on a theme, sometimes in the form of a story, told with a dry and detached sense of humour, but often a jazzier and more free-flowing succession of fantastically evocative imagery that juxtaposes the mundane and relatable against the esoteric and arcane.<\/p>\n However, as the title suggests, there\u2019s a progression in that regard away from more earthbound imagery, with tracks about owning a therapy pet and visiting a psychiatrist replaced with references to druidic practices, astrology, or being fired off into space. The album is the soundtrack to a vision quest into Rock\u2019s feelings of paranoia, social alienation and a transcendent experience of thought, and his incredible skill as a lyricist, constructing abstract gnomic expressions that often take far longer to absorb than they do to say, rewards the ambition of the imagery. Rock seems to have a typically ambivalent relationship to these practices of self-medication, often sounding dismissive of \u201cwoo-woo\u201d new ageism, while baking his complex and inscrutable lyricism in allusions to it: \u201csome try to combat any kind of odd force tryna make contact, nah. Let it in.\u201d He often seems frustrated at his inability to escape his racing mind and overpowering neuroses, while seeing the humour in his own absurd situation: \u201chow\u2019d I get this far without a bindle full of crystal skulls?\u201d<\/p>\n These fragmentary sketches of hectic ambience are somewhat tied together by the concept laid out on the opening track \u201cHello From The Spirit World\u201d, establishing the album as a survival handbook for explorations of the unknown planes of existence in which he perceives himself. With imagery of transfiguration, psychedelia and concealed threats both imagined and actual, the album sounds the way a movie like Annihilation <\/em><\/a>looks, perfectly living up to the surreal album cover: uncanny, horrifying and undeniably beautiful. Tracks like \u201cGauze\u201d, \u201cPizza Alley\u201d, \u201cHoly Waterfall\u201d and \u201cSleeper Car\u201d concretise this allegory, describing his travels through strange climes in Peru or Thailand and his often frightening or transformative experiences.<\/p>\n