Rating:
  Review Date: April 18, 2007
  Website: El-P Website
  Label: Def Jux

El-P “I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead” Album Review
I know this might sound crazy, but what I love most about living in New York City is the sounds. I know, I know … it’s loud and all, with cars and sirens and subway trains and people everywhere. But I find myself absorbing the noise … feeding off of it, as if it’s become a part of me.

No Sleep ‘Til … Brooklyn?
I live in Brooklyn right off the J train route … so close that it runs just fifteen or so feet away from my third story apartment windows. Every ten minutes or so, a train whizzes by in each direction, rattling the building around me. Now although this might be annoying to some, it’s actually quite therapeutic to me, and I have found that the comforting sound of the train actually helps me sleep at night. After all, if the trains are still running, then everything’s probably aiight … right? But if a train doesn’t come by at night, I seem to wake up, somehow unable to sleep without the sound.

Sounds of the City
Def Jux co-founder and underground legend El-P is from Brooklyn, and I can’t help but think that his famously-unique production style was heavily influenced by these surroundings. When I listen to his futuristic industrial-ish beats, it has always made me think of the steel, brick and concrete of buildings and streets banging together to create their own comprehensive voice. Perhaps El-P also absorbed the noises of the city. Perhaps they have also become a part of him and his music.

I don’t know if that’s possible dogg … but after listening to El-P’s new album “I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead,” I start to think that it could be. From the time we are born, human beings have the capability of memorizing things we hear . storing them in our brains so that we can recognize the sounds next time we encounter them. Because of this, sounds can often cause nostalgia, an often-idealized longing or recognition with events, situations or places of the past. This makes sense to me, because every track on this album contains some sound, beat or sample that reminds me of noises I hear every day in NYC.

“Tasmanian Pain Coaster” contains a high-pitched screech during the chorus that reminds me of a subway train breaking into a station. “Smithereens (Stop Cryin’)” leads in with the sounds of rain, similar to the torrential downpours we experience in the NYC area, mixed in with siren sounds reminiscent of police cars and ambulances speeding by you on the streets. “Up All Night” is backed by a hard-banging drumbeat that sounds like those kids you can find beating on buckets if you take the L train to the 14th St - Union Square station. “EMG” contains a dope treble line that sounds like that cat in Central Park who makes beats using spoons and wine bottles. “Drive” contains a beeping backbeat that made me think of the constant sounds of car horns coming at you from all directions in the city, mixed with an old-school video game sound that brought me back to playing RC Pro Am on the original Nintendo.

“Dir Sirs” brings in a one-beat about half way through the track that is pretty much an exact replication of the sound you get when dropping a quarter in the tin cup of the old blind guy in the wheelchair who sits in between the McDonalds and the Chase Manhattan bank one block off the J train and Marcy Avenue stop in Brooklyn. “Run The Numbers” provides another hard-banging beat that sounds like the cats beating trash cans and break dancing to entertain tourists in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on summertime weekends. “Habeas Corpses (Draconian Love)” features sounds of airplanes and helicopters zooming in the skies, similar to the sounds you hear when the police copters are swirling around my neighborhood at night, as well as guns cocking, which the lucky residents of the city don’t get to hear much. “The Overly Dramatic Truth” contains a shaky vibratory backdrop, which to me sounds exactly like a subway train passing overhead and shaking the ground below, causing the sounds around you to vibrate in and out.

“Flyentology” also incorporates the likeness of a train during the chorus, but this one sounds like that underground train that whizzes by your station in the express lane. “No Kings” presents a high-pitched blowing sound similar to hearing the wind whistle through the buildings on those frigid winter days. “League of Extraordinary Nobodies” samples sounds of laughter and commotion common in Broadway and off-Broadway theatres. And “This Must Be Our Time” blends in a sound every eighth beat or so during the verses that is reminiscent of the early morning ruckus of shopkeepers in my neighborhood pulling up their gates for the start of a new business day.

Thirteen tracks … all containing sounds that remind me of NYC; all of which you could hear by taking a commute along the J, Z or M trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The sounds of the city homie. Ahhhh …

Almost every New Yorker I’ve ever met says they miss the city after being gone for a couple days. They find it hard to relax in the silence of the suburbs; hard to think without sirens or car horns blaring; hard to sleep without hearing the trains go by. If you’re one of these people, pick up a copy of El-P’s “I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead.” Put it in your headphones whenever you’re out of town or away on vacation. I guarantee it will make you feel like you’re back in NYC. Shit, the train’s coming near … time for me to go to bed homie. Peace.