El-P: I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead

After waiting nearly five years for producer/rapper extraordinaire El-P to release a follow-up to 2002’s Fantastic Damage, fans now have available a sophomore effort that doesn’t disappoint. I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, with its heavily layered, dark, atmospheric, gritty, and synth-saturated sound, feels like a hip-hop soundtrack to a science fiction film.

El-P (Jaime Meline) mashes his unrelenting delivery with both focused and stream-of-consciousness-type lyrics, creating an engaging synthesis with the heavy, ominous creations that lie beneath his lines. The album isn’t overtly political, but its second track, “Smithereens,” which is based on the torture and humiliation practiced at the Abu Ghraib prison, has a video filled with stark imagery designed to get viewers thinking.

The thirteen-track endeavor also doesn’t lack guest appearances, as Trent Reznor, The Mars Volta, Aesop Rock, Cage, and Cat Power all show up on various tracks. The cameos, though, are far from spotlighted.

Meline employs Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala from Mars Volta on a seven-minute opener, but you probably wouldn’t notice if you had no previous knowledge; Chan Marshall (Cat Power) shows up to add a few vocal lines and tinkling keyboard on a closing tune of equal length that features a two-minute, instrumental outro.

Reznor’s collaboration on “Flyentology,” the prayer to God of a less-than-devout airplane passenger about to crash, is one of the catchier moments on I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead. Overall, the disc is about everything for which fans of El-P could ask.

- Scott Morrow
El-P (Definitive Jux)