The most visceral sounds in “Dilla Says Go” come through loud and clear: Numerous Dilla vocals, an encouraging “it’s alright…” sample, a perfect female vocal chopped to only a whoop, that beautiful bells/vibes melody. But underneath it all, that which the rest of the song rises out of, is a mess of strings so tangled-up and smooshed into one another that they whine, wheeze, and glow, like a malfunctioning something or other. A walking, growling Godzilla toy with only a little bit of battery left, groaning instead of growling, stumbling instead of walking. But there’s something beautiful and warm in the malfunction.So many songs on Donuts have these deeper crazier layers of noise or like tertiary brilliance that’s the weird result of Dilla super-short chops. A sample cut so short and tight but still with the one piece of something that sticks out or sounds bizarre. A quarter second vocal grunt with a 1/8th second guitar strum at the tail-end that just couldn’t be removed…Dilla’s brilliance was leaving it there, not declaring the song at that point unsample-able. He made it work.
The leftovers of “Dilla Says Go” come from speeding-up and looping the bells from “Rubber Band” by The Trammps. But what wonderful leftovers! This devastating, heated glow of strings, stretching and morphing unpredictably. But then, Dilla loops that unpredictable five or so seconds of noise and it becomes a like sub-loop to the main bells loop. A happy accident.
“Dilla Says Go” or, at least the scrunched-up strings all the way in the background, is basically Glitch music. Really, a lot of Donuts might qualify as Glitch in the sense that it’s music based on chance and accident resulting from digital sources. And like the best Glitch (Oval, Nobukazu Takemura’s Scope, Fennesz, Tim Hecker, Jim O’Rourke I’m Happy and I’m Singing…), these weird jarring accidents, this pushing the instrument or computer or sampler to the limit, results in oddly affecting, incredibly warm music.
Brian Eno’s work–which I compared Dilla to yesterday–is similar in that it has an odd distancing effect at first. It might even seem intellectual, but once it grabs you, the sophistication and conscious (at times a little too conscious) artistry of it wraps back around and it becomes incredibly emotional and visceral. That’s why Donuts is often dismissed as “just a beat tape” or even boring; it’s needs time to wear at your ears and brain.
“All profoundly original art looks ugly at first.”-Clement Greenberg
There’s a halfway point to meet Donuts though, especially on “Dilla Says Go”, which stacks easy-to-get-the-first-time samples and melodies atop the sampled-strings Glitch soundscape underneath. The bells are full of hope, looking to the future, and Dilla’s voice dropping delighted ad-libs builds upon that hopefulness. Dilla literally says “Go!” but he’s also making a tune that encourages and inspires. You want to build a house, or start that diet, or give your parents a hug, or start making dope beats yourself, and buy your girlfriend the expensive NIKEs she’s been looking at online…Let’s go!
That “it’s alright” vocal though, and the drone Glitch whatever whatever underneath it all sounds inward and melancholy, touching on a core sadness or concern about what’s going on that even the most gleeful moments in life can’t totally eschew.
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