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BeatKnoxxx: “3 A.M.” – percolating beats for the 23rd Century!

The plug on their audio stream reads: BeatKnoxxx is a Synth-Hop Producer from the year 2285. 3 A.M. is the first installment of the trilogy. Synth-Hop is a mixture of several Hip hop and several Edm styles.” Fittingly perhaps, the sound on this album, “3 A.M.”, is brooding and melancholic with ambient washes, despite the odd raised tempo here and there. And that is the beautiful thing about the music: it runs the gamut from lushly atmospheric, to a sort of melodic mental massage to a kind of revelry in introspection. BeatKnoxxx’s work treads that tricky line between being gloomy and celebratory.

the album cover
the album cover

“3 A.M.” epitomizes the best of the electronic-hiphop beatmaking music genre and shows BeatKnoxxx at his songwriting peak. It is a cohesive unit that begs to be heard end to end, which is a rare thing in today’s single driven pop music scene. BeatKnoxxx is adept at seamlessly integrating diverse vocal samples (often played backward) into his music, all while maintaining a single identity and cohesiveness.

To be utterly fair the thirteen-song set plays out more like a set of 13 emotions, riding on percolating electronic beats and lush effects. After the “Intro”, the album kicks off with the haunting melody of “Take A Hold”. I immediately fell in love with the combination of trip hop beats and fragile, fluttering synth pad sounds.

The album continues to get better with the electro-hip hop clash of “CareLess Emotion”. Now picture a stark cold steel machine with an opening leading to a lush, soft, comfortable interior – that’s what you’ll find in Dreaming On The Corner”. All throughout the album, the lyrics in the vocal hooks have serious themes and hard-hitting messages. The songs are also interspersed with carefully selected, impacting speeches from our time.

the back cover
the back cover

BeatKnoxxx is an extraordinary producer who really stomps anyone whose ears grace the sound waves his music rides on. The ethereal, hip-hop driven beat, with eerie vocals sweeping in and out in places, is again evident in the outstanding “Hiphop Malfunction”. While the 2-part “Thief” is a technological wonder – electronica at its finest. Richly textured, these songs sweep up, down and sideways, with bleeps, vocoders and rumbling synth bass lines.

“Take A Hold (BaNkS KaSiNO R – MX)”, is another scary beauty, with tumbling vocal loops, cryptic swooping electronics and slowed down tempos. The tracks on “3 A.M.”, may be mind-bending for some, on the first listen. It is a multi-layered album of beats that reflect a sort of emptiness, anxiety, disillusionment and a towering futuristic presence. Picking up on the road humanity has taken thus far – it sounds like a perfect 23rd Century anthem in my book!

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