Spirit World Field Guide

Description

The road has been long for Aesop Rock to get here, consistently releasing an impressive series of albums, singles, and collaborative projects, constantly strengthening and diversifying his audience around the world. Yet the rapper, an icon of the New York underground scene, shows no signs of fatigue or drift, continually pushing his creative boundaries and perhaps today reaching the peak of his art. With the release in 2019 of Malibu Ken, a completely trippy side project with producer Tobacco, Aesop Rock confirms his inexhaustible talent as an irresistible songwriter, often humorous and always sharp. Then in early 2020, the single "Rogue Wave" is released, closely followed by "Freedom Finger," in which the artist immerses himself in the video game of the same name for which the track was written. This year 2020 is also marked by the reissue of his first album Float, which celebrates its 20th anniversary, and of course by this new studio album, a massive collection of 21 new tracks, Spirit World Field Guide. Throughout the 21 chapters of this new album, listeners are plunged into a surreal universe shaped like a survival guide in "the in-between world." "If you too are among the countless people who feel both dead and alive, the advice in this guide might be useful to you," the inspired narrator confides. Since his beginnings in the 90s, Aesop Rock's nearly perfect flow has become one with his persona, turning into a true offering for the imagery that accompanies his tracks. In Spirit World Field Guide, characters, animals, inanimate objects, and their respective environments instantly come to life at the passage of Aesop and his unmatched verve.