Review Summary: Mushrooms + Helium = Awesomeness
It’s a common message within our society – it’s beaten into our brains by our parents from an early age, you see ads on television conveying it, and the government backs it up – ‘doing drugs doesn’t result in anything positive’. Touché, but I highly disagree. The product of a week-long mushroom binge,
The Unseen is a brilliantly abstract experimental record by
Madlib under the alias of
Quasimoto, and the potent one-two punch of ‘shrooms and helium results in one knockout of an album.
As always,
Madlib’s beats are on point. The plush, exotic, laidback, loopy instrumentals serve as an excellent backdrop for this ‘stoner’ album and go perfectly with the uber high, helium-induced voice of the criminally insane hunchback we know as
Quasimoto. The far-out combination of the autotuned chipmunk voice of
Quasimoto and his murdering, sex-loving, and drug-dealing ways make for an interesting contrast and greatly adds to the fun absurdity of the album.
Much like other experimental rap albums,
The Unseen is greater than the sum of its parts. It is not an album of technicality, but one of atmosphere. For the greater good, the feel of the record far surpasses any of its comprising characteristics in order to induce a trippy, relaxing environment that stimulates the listener into entering a spaced-out, amusing dimension of thought.
With the assistance of some psychedelic mushrooms,
Madlib produces a fun concept album that isn’t so much comical as it is perplexing and absurd.
Quasimoto is a villainous force to reckon with, and the very idea of him propels the album to sheer excellence that upper-echelon, normal rap based upon technicalities could never achieve.
