INAUDIBLE

Arnaud Bernard aka Onra is a French-Vietnamese beatmaker living in Paris, who’s amazing debut “Chinoiseries” somehow remained unknown to me until very recently. The album was released in 2007 and is a slick and unusual collection of instrumental hip hop reminiscent of everyone from Dilla, Madlib, Doom, and Flying Lotus, yet with a twist. “Chinoiseries” was created after Arnaud went on a trip to Vietnam and picked up a dusty stack of old Chinese and Vietnamese vinyl to use as his source material. The result is a brilliant foray in avant-garde beat making, which never once sounds clichéd or cheesy. The hiss and crackle of the warped vinyls add to the album’s charm, as you wonder what musty basement the records had been hiding in for the past 20 years.

“Chinoiseries” is made of 32 snippets, none longer than two and a half minutes, similar in fashion to Dilla’s “Donuts”, and each track is like a brief vignette into the far east of the past spliced with dope beats for the future. I am totally digging it and highly recommend for all fans of hip hop. Onra has also released his second album “1.0.8” this year, which features the same style of sampled Asian beats.

Check it and mafuckin’ wreck it! Won’t dissapoint! Here is a delicious sample of the good stuff…

Tags: chinoiseries, dope beats, favorite recordings, hip hop, mmmlele, onra, onra 1.0.8

This entry was posted on November 26, 2009 at 18:15 and is filed under electronica, hip hop, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.