| Paper Tiger - False Hopes |
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| Written by Steve McPherson | |
| Monday, January 21, 2008 at 03:12 PM | |
 Paper TigerFalse Hopes Doomtree Records 2007 In an age of shortened attention spans, Doomtree's strategy of releasing debut mini-albums by their artists under the moniker False Hopes is kind of brilliant. Forget our ADD-afflicted society, though—it's the rare artist who can lay a solid forty, fifty, or seventy-plus minutes of solid music right out of the gate, so EPs are an ideal introduction to a developing artist. For rappers like Cecil Otter, Dessa, and Mike Mictlan (the last couple Doomtree artists to release False Hopes discs), the format gave them a chance to drop a couple surefire killers, a couple tracks that show their range, and a couple collaborations before overstaying their welcome. They all released little rough-edged diamonds as a result. It turns out this short-form approach works as well for DJs like Paper Tiger, whose own False Hopes dropped at the Doomtree Blowout back in December. You might only know him as the guy with the day-glo sunglasses behind the turntables at Doomtree shows, and he certainly hasn't racked up the production credits like Lazerbeak, Marshall Larada, or even Cecil Otter or P.O.S., but on his False Hopes, Paper Tiger demonstrates instrumental chops on par with DJs like Rjd2 (particularly on the piano-driven "Make-Make") and DJ Shadow (on the cut-and-paste drum break of "Interlude"). "Singer," with its stuttery, clipped beats and bed of acoustic guitar picking, recalls Prefuse 73, and is the album's most majestic track. Taken as a whole, the tone of the record seems a bit lighter than the median for a Doomtree release; it stretches and pulls on the melancholy undercurrent present in a lot of the crew's work and manages to produce something a little more lyrical, a little more expansive. A full-length release that doubled this False Hopes' track count of eight probably wouldn't deliver anything that releases by Rjd2 or Shadow haven't already accomplished, but again, the record's abbreviated length is really its strongest suit here. It's another brick in the ever-growing wall of False Hopes releases, and one day, when Doomtree puts them all together in a big old box, we'll realize just how much good music this crew has managed to produce. Download "Singer" here , or stream below: |
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| Last Updated: Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 01:08 PM |
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