Mochipet: Microphonepet
Daly City

Having been exposed to only one previous Mochipet album, Feel My China Vol. 1 on the now-defunct Component Records, I half-expected Microphonepet, David Wang's collaboration with multiple MCs, to be an equally frenetic throwdown, albeit one fixated largely on hip-hop rather than breakcore. Much to my surprise, Microphonepet finds Wang exercising admirable restraint, content to offer up twenty slick and tight backing tracks—“Mochi-Beats,” in his words—created between 2003-2008 for a busload of MCs to rhyme over. Of course, restraint should be interpreted to mean relative restraint as the material's anything but minimal; Wang's wacky constructions do blaze with crisp beats and buzzing synths yet they do so without splintering into incoherence.

Highlights include the charging funk of “Get Your Whistle Wet” whose infectious female chorus hook could help the song get over as a single, “Take You Down” whose throbbing chorus is so funky it's downright sexy, and the Sammy Davis-meets-ZZ Top glitch-funkfest “Sharp Drest.” Opio, Dopestyle, and Pro The Leader trade hyperactive rhymes on the grimey “We Put it Down” while Wang sharpens his razor on Jahcoozi's vocals during the roller-coaster dubstepper “Girls and Boys and Toys.” “Hope Again” and “PJs” slam with clap-happy party fever and hammering computer-funk respectively. Changing things up, “Ride On,” with Mike Boo and Raashan of Crown City Rockers, opts for Afrobeat driven by horns and guitars. Good times abound, and at seventy-three minutes, there's ample material to sample.

April 2008