Cities Aviv- Come To Life (2014)

Cities Aviv- Come To Life (2014)

As I have written in past posts I’m really excited at the new age hip hop is experimenting, the rules of the genre are really saving its creative veins form commercialization and stagnation, presenting amazingly innovative new options for the music, to experiment, grow and expand, with performers embracing the worlds of ambient, new age, jazz, electronica, industrial and noise to enrich their productions, in imaginative ways that, a couple of years ago, would have been unimaginable.

One of these daring innovators is Cities Aviv, a man that comes from Memphis, not exactly a hot bed for hip hop, a man not afraid of turning the hip hop game inside out and re writing every rule of the genre, still a vibrant part of hip hop American underground Cities Aviv may never achieve mainstream appreciation or massive sales of his music, but the man I without a doubt opening the eyes of new generations to the endless possibilities of the genre and thus changing it perhaps forever.

Cities Aviv music has been making in late years heavy use of distortion and dissonance, making his music a very cool alternative to the ultra-slick and superficial gangsta rap, Cities Aviv music is wild, exuberant and vibrant and as he presents it in his newest Come To Life, his experiments keep shaking the hip hop world.

Intro presents a chaotic entrance to Cities Aviv music, thru a harsh wall of noise those seeking for guns, money or chicks themes are quickly expelled from here, noise reigns supreme and we are forewarned about this mind altering hip hop experiment, Fool comes second with its dissonant cacophonic arpeggios, exotic electronica side up with powerful abstract beats, while the man Cities Aviv starts rhyming in the middle of the turbulent back up of music he has created, Head reminds me of the slick electronics people like James Ferraro has been using lately, but Cities doesn’t lower the level of intensity, in fact his rhyming remains dynamic, intense, and attacks merciless our senses, there’s an incredible abrasiveness to his music that reminds me of post punk, which again, makes him even weirder, and then he merciless attacks a tune like URL IRL, a powerful tune that reminds me of the good collages people like the Bomb Squad used to do for Public Enemy and Ice Cube, only this time with a bigger focus on the high dissonant parts instead of the deep and low bass.

Dissolve reminds me of eighties synth music, and believe the beats aren’t funk, but something else, robotic, cold and at the same time nervous and shaky, a machine breaking down, touches of the industrial music that perhaps may be informing Trent Reznor next musical nightmare, this while Perpetuate The Real gives us a prime example of a completely different dynamic in hip hop, making it experimental, sexy and at the same time weird and completely odd, without a doubt an esthetic that will gain lot of terrain in the next years, and then sending another really oddball with Realms an almost unclassified piece of music, that shows the enormous talent and courage of Cities Aviv, a man that seems destined to turn hip hop into something else, something wild, experimental and unexpected, planting the seeds for a completely new and exciting underground that may send black music to new terrains in years to come.

Comes to Life is an amazing piece of music, an example of new and exciting times for black music, the showing of a new minded individuals that are decided to break the rules and propose new waves of expression, the liberation of a genre that sounded so free in the 80s and started to lose vitality and strength in the past decade, but the future looks bright, watching it thru Cities Aviv eyes.