For 2014’s first installment of Numbah 4,080, I figured it fitting to throw it back to one of last year’s late — and slightly overlooked — local releases. American Rhapsody is the debut full-length from Mountainwalker (born Aaron Berg), a multi-instrumentalist and poet/MC who originally hails from South Carolina. It’s also one of the most memorable and left-field projects you’ll hear this year. Stream it below, or hear it/purchase it via
Mountainwalker's Bandcamp page.
American Rhapsody is an expansive record, and one that finds Mountainwalker playing guitar, bass (upright and Fender), keyboards and a host of other instruments alongside a slew of guest musicians, who contribute various other parts. The one other collaborative constant on American Rhapsody is Coach K, a DJ/producer who mans the boards throughout the record and helps strike the happy medium between live instrumentation and non-live production.
On first listen, it’s hard to know what to call American Rhapsody, or even perhaps what to make of it. Sure enough, on the album’s second track, “Into the Light,” Mountainwalker recites in his see-saw, one-of-a-kind flow, “Where I am going is not a question of wealth or accolades or genre lines or geography / I follow no map, so no one can follow me.” This is pretty representative of the album’s truly one-of-a-kind scope and vision.
Mountainwalker’s stylistic web seems to be informed by numerous facets of hip-hop and folk. But because he achieves his sound without relying too deeply on the preconceived notions of either traditions, he gives American Rhapsody the reflexivity to morph along with his unique whims.
“Messengers," the album’s third track, is one of several with a boom-bap aesthetic. Here Mountainwalker comes the closest he gets to a traditional hip-hop flow, channelling The Beastie Boys and The Pharcyde. Indeed, “Messengers” borrows from boom-bap’s “conscious” history, hitting home a chorus that encourages the listener to “look past the messenger and perceive the message.” All of American Rhapsody is replete with conscious musing, in fact. Sometimes Mountainwalker tackles social and political issues, other times he seems to get downright cosmic; but it’d be dangerous to limit American Rhapsody to the “conscious hip-hop” box. Berg often seems more akin to Sun Ra than to Kendrick.
American Rhapsody’s impressive scope culminates in its title tracks “American Rhapsody” and “American Rhapsody - Pt. II.” They both find Mountainwalker waxing poetic in free verse over a loop built on an acoustic guitar. Both tracks really drive home the poet’s unique brand of consciousness and highlight the disarming frankness and vulnerability that define the record. Mountainwalker and Coach K may both be hip-hop heads, but American Rhapsody’s universe draws as equally from the lineage of radical American folk music and poetry as it does from conscious rap. These two have created an alternate universe where Allen Ginsberg and Del tha Funkee Homosapien may very well be best friends.
