Serengeti & Polyphonic / Terradactyl

Anticon

Serengeti and Polyphonic's Terradactyl is about place--losing place, mostly, struggling to find it again, and succumbing to the fact that it's cold, and surprisingly lonely, dressed in the human condition. Serengeti, heretofore a master of on-record character acting, appears as his most vulnerable self: wedged between a dream and a series of day-jobs, between a failed marriage and raising new life, inside of a large family with fractured ties, and split between two distinct racial/economic paradigms. His cracked abstractions (this is no "poor-me" man's emo diary) paint him as homeless, at times literally, while weaving their meaning into the much larger loom of universal displacement. And as on this duo's 2007 debut, Don't Give Up, worldly beat-maestro Polyphonic makes beauty out of so much madness. Ironically, Terradactyl begins with "Bon Voyage," where digital tones bounce into the foreground and expand into a frantic space-scape beneath Serengeti's streaming vitriol toward a drug-abusing friend. "Playing in Subway Stations" is idyllically calm by comparison: while rich synth-bass burbles alongside acoustic guitar and timpani drums, Serengeti and New Zealander Renee-Louise Carafice croon a bittersweet rendering of love's transience. On "Move!," clacking percussives rearrange themselves to an unknown cue, while the words follow suit by unraveling abstract yarns about motion. The live cello on instant standout "My Negativity" recalls Float-era Aesop Rock (albeit, re-produced by Tony Hoffer), with Serengeti delivering a pre-apocalyptic warning drenched in strange imagery. One of the album's best is "Steroids," featuring Adam "Doseone" Drucker. In a Madvillain moment, Serengeti is run-on gritty in the third person, telling a surreal tale of escapism and mistrust. As the music surges into crazy-land, the erstwhile voice of Subtle and Themselves executes a decidedly buff verse. Later, Serengeti trades lines about love with another legend, Buck 65, on the dank and dubby "La La Lala." Terradactyl's final moments play out on "Calliope," wherein Serengeti rewrites his own history through a series of "what ifs." He collects himself audibly between lines, but as Polyphonic's score intensifies, the lyrical cynicism becomes shouting, and Serengeti's voice is eventually consumed. As the song burns out, the outdoors rushes in, and the listeners find themselves not unlike their narrator: out in some public place, stripped to their skivvies.

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