Various Butter
Seattle’s Fourthcity collective turned label is known about Cascadia for two things: hip-hop and laptop […]
Seattle’s Fourthcity collective turned label is known about Cascadia for two things: hip-hop and laptop music. On Butter, Fourthcity’s smooth, resolutely downtempo second comp, notably absent are laptops (on the highlights) passing the spotlight on to the collective’s CPU-free big names Plan B and Truckasauras. Laptops don’t exist in Truckasauras’ world: Their cut, “Porkwich,” is a melancholic, midtempo track built of 303s, 808s, and a Nanolooped Game Boy. Plan B comes across as a stateside, chamber-esque Lali Puna (in fact, Fourthcity as a whole feels a bit like Morr Music trapped in a rock town). Newcomer Snowmanplan steals the comp though, giving us a dreamy haze of atmospheric melody, trading between laptop and live band with nary a blink.