The Seattle based production duo Blue Sky Black Death is back to what they do best: cinematic, epic, shoegaze influenced instrumental hip hop. Although Kingston and Young God have always strayed from the expected by doing everything from indie synth pop to hardcore boom bap (with the likes of Guru, Jean Grae, Hieroglyphics, Jedi Mind Tricks, etc) they have always maintained an unrivaled level of quality and consistency with all of their work. Their 2008 instrumental record "Late Night Cinema" is commonly thought of as their master work to date with critics such as XLR8R Magazine saying "Late Night Cinema Read more on Last.fm.
This has been a good year for trip-hop instrumentals, and ‘Noir’ just became my favorite. The individual songs become well-written journeys, twisting and weaving through movements of backbeats, electronic sounds, and various instruments. A key element to an instrumental (or, here, mostly instrumental) album is that intangible quality that allows it to operate either as unobtrusive background music or interesting, complex listening – ‘Noir’ definitely has that under wraps.