Cuthead

THE DETOUR

Intro

Cuthead

The Detour

The Detour Part 1

He's back. After a break that felt like an eternity, Cuthead has finally awoken from his creative beauty sleep to check up on his home base Uncanny Valley with his new album THE DETOUR. To avoid overexciting everyone’s attention span, the album is spread over four parts. And he's definitely not coming back as a cheapskate since the album is full of gifts that true Cuthead fans desire. In other words, he does what he does best: Blasting out slick tracks that oscillate between laid-back underground hip-hop, sample heavy house and vintage acid, but with enough surprises along the way. The tracks were created over the last few years, including some jams from his live set that he made while travelling or in a hotel.

As soon as the typical cozy, warm chords kick in during the INTRO of The Detour Part 1, you immediately feel at home again in Cuthead's world, where it's always Saturday afternoon and laid-back jams drip out of the speakers (at least on two of the four parts). On top of that, Chester Watson from St. Louis (one of Cuthead's absolute favorite rappers) provided a feature. With his distinctive voice and dreamy flow, Chester explains in not one but two versions of PROCEED how to carry on and stay relaxed despite adverse circumstances. TOUR DE FRANCE, on the other hand, is a trapstrumental for the masses in which a hi-hat thunderstorm is intertwined with a wind sample that constantly twists around itself.

The second in Cuthead's tetralogy is what we can certainly call a house monster. It starts with a track named after one of Cuthead’s special skills: MPC JAM. With its filter attacks and unmistakable drops, the track builds on Cuthead's great house floor fillers, leaving no ass standing still. SUNDAY 5 PM enters the floor like a bird of paradise with room-filling disco strings, before SPACED OUT follows with Theo Parrish-like grooves. MIDNIGHT ROUTE closes The Detour Part 2 with broken beats and an unusual but irresistible electronic bassline.

The opener of the third part once again praises the old promise of the House Nation, not without ZUBU being refined with the very own Cuthead spin, which definitely puts the track on a techno floor as well. POWER ACID lives up to its name and comes across as a classic warehouse acid screw that takes every rave to the edge. Understatement is also not required with PARTY LIKE IT'S 99. After all, every Saturday afternoon is followed by a Saturday night and a piano house bomb with a little ounce of acid always goes down well on such an occasion.

The final chapter of THE DETOUR opens promisingly and in typical Cuthead style with the aptly titled BONKERS and the kind of weirder head-nodding beat that only the Dresden resident can squeeze out of his samples. In LISOLEIL, Malone the Chemist drops his lines over what feels like an aquatic jazz foundation. Cuthead spotted the Canadian rapper when he posted a freestyle under a tweet from Flying Lotus. After that, the snares are turned up again in the sample fest that is FOXY. OUTRO is almost epic by Cuthead standards and could easily be the soundtrack to a modern giallo film.

The album is accompanied by beautiful animations created in collaboration between illustrator Robert Deutsch and animator Tobias Kramer.