DJ Edgar Hoover-The Ed "Duffle Bag Boy" Begley Jr. Mixtape

DJ Edgar Hoover-The Ed "Duffle Bag Boy" Begley Jr. Mixtape

Driving into a Midwestern town is a bit like opening the first pages of a new novel.  The dirty rustling and unknown sensations come quick and hard, overwhelming until the psyche can adjust and realize that the new experiences are only old tropes warmed over.  The stoplights you’ve seen before, the storefronts merged into one inimitable mental rat’s warren, the colors of merchandise and gas station effluvia fluttering in front of your eyes in a myriad pattern you’ve seen ten thousand times before.  You might hear a shout from a corner, the guttural howls cutting through the fog screen you didn’t realize had enveloped your car until dirt started raining onto the hood.

Then it’s time to realize you’re not in the world you had assumed you inhabited.   Your life and reality are at the beckon hand of a madman, and the digital noise washing through your ears is nothing more than a brilliant remixing of the fucked-up pop reality and arrogant washing machine idiocy that grows like a tumor inside everyone that walks around you.  

DJ Edgar Hoover operates like a prism, skewing and refracting the idiotic modern hip hop of the club banger and toasting it on Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks melody or letting it simmer on the equally-idiotic Jimmy Buffet styling and chopped/screwed bullshit that permeates the internet.  You’d do yourself good to learn some musical lessons from track six and realize that all music can smoosh together given the proper hand. Indeed, this whole album is a lesson on not giving a fuck and twisting sound as hard as possible.  That’s admirable in a world where everyone wants the new viral hit, and it means something to me that there’s some dude (because DJ Edgar Hoover is invariably a guy, argue if you want) sitting in his basement churning out fucked-up renditions of whatever falls into his hands.  I feel a kindred spirit brewing in this moron.  He’s Everyman with a sampler, pitchshifting and bitfucking himself to sleep because it’s the only thing that soothes his nerves.  He might work a shit job and come home to a world he can manipulate; sound falls through his fingers and the canvas is your head.

This is digital idiocy and artfulness hewn large against a broader spectrum of blankness, the internet spewing weird and interesting shit like this while also offering us a plethora of cat pictures and hentai.  Listen with an open ear and discover new ways to hear music.

 -Brandon