- Victoria promoter and producer Monolithium's debut comes on Error Broadcast, where he fits in with the label's quirkily mismatched stylistic blends. What sets Chris Longshanks' "swag" music apart is, you guessed it, his swagger: the four tracks here have a uneven, drunken (crunken?) sway that sends their percussion stumbling into unpredictable elliptical formations. The influence of dubstep, particularly the harder stuff, is inescapable on tracks like "Heat Pump" or "Selfish Lil' Crunk," where nails-on-chalkboard scrapes duel with drum patterns that take the genre's swing to extreme new levels of measure-mashing chaos.
To attribute it all to dubstep would be unfair, as Monolithium shows just as much love for funk touchstones. A hearty diet of fries to go with that shake powers the EP's two more promising tracks; "Simon & G-Funk" is driven by soulful vocal samples and humid chord stabs but is thoughtlessly scribbled on by hyperactive snares. Something of an exhibition for this new crunked-up hip-hop sound Monolithium is espousing, "Swag Equity" is the star, with skittering, glitchy drums tiptoeing over a boisterous squelchy bassline. Remixes of the title track come from Vancouver "sexwave" peddler Prison Garde and Montrealer Ango, with the former turning it inside-out into one of his usual 808 odysseys and the latter fashioning a sub-heavy march padded by onomatopoeic vocal samples.
Tracklist01. Selfish Lil Crunk
02. Simon & G-Funk
03. Heat Pump
04. Swag Equity
05. Simon & G-Funk (Ango Remix)
06. Simon & G-Funk (Prison Garde Remix)