Downtown & Brooklyn Only by 310
Formats: Double CD (BAY 21CD) Digital (BAY 21E)
Release Date: 19 November 2001
Downtown & Brooklyn Only is a long overdue re-issue of the first two albums by NYC duo 310 - Snorkelhouse and AUG 56 - originally released in 1998 and 1997 respectively. The albums were released on their own tiny imprint in very limited quantities, and this CD marks their first full release. A double CD, DTBO will retail for the price of a regular single CD.
The world of 310 is not one to enter without a compass, a knapsack full of dry clothes, an acetylene torch and $1.50; it's very easy to get lost in the sub-subway caverns which 310 have staked out.
Snorkelhouse - the album that got them noticed by The Leaf Label in the first place - is filled with hypnotic loops and rhythms, fusing hiphop sensibilities with shadowy found sounds and distant voices. The sound of the city beneath your feet. It has a dynamic all its own: at once dense, spacious, atmospheric, hypnogogic. You really need to let it live in your head for a while...
AUG 56 is like finding yourself up to the receding-hairline in a puddle which you'd misjudged to be ankle-deep. Proceedings get progressively darker starting with the first yards of 'Global Illage', a shadowland somewhere between :zoviet*france: and DJ Spooky.
310 are two old friends from New York who have been making music together since they were kids: Joseph Dierker (DJ and "inventor" currently gone to ground in Seattle) and Tim Donovan (engineer at some of NYC's top studios).
[FYI: 310 is pronounced 'three-ten']
"[310's] first album had some of the most beautiful textures I've ever heard... definitely a triumph of creativity. Made my head spin' Bob Power, producer of A Tribe Called Quest, D'Angelo, Erykah Badu and The Roots.
CD 1 (Snorkelhouse):
1. Fresh 24
2. Raincarnation
3. Red Horizon
4. Two Endtables And A Telephone
5. Farm Show Complex
6. Rubberfoot
7. Your Mother's No Good Here
8. Between The Red Ropes
9. Persian Wolf
10. Stickbag
11. Dick Vitale Is Dead
12. Exu
13. Get Outta Here Reagan
14. Urban Mantras
15. Spawn Winds
CD 2 (Aug 56):
1. Pharmacy Within
2. Mbaba
3. Global Illage
4. Prewar Doorman
5. Fear Of Zamfir
6. Cop Slain
7. Warsaw 49-50
8. Downtown & Brooklyn Only
9. Indifferent Trains
10. On The Lamb REVIEWS
All Music Guide