Antipop Consortium

4/5
Fluorescent Black
Like Jay-Z, Antipop Consortium released their ‘farewell’ album in 2003. But only now, on the heels of the superstar’s third post-retirement full-length, is this esteemed alt-hip-hop collective staging a studio comeback. Fluorescent Black is so hyper-involved that it’s hard to begrudge the delay.

If the disc doesn’t match the glitchy splendour of Antipop Consortium’s 2002 landmark, Arrhythmia, it still attains euphoric sensory overload on tracks like ‘Get Lite’, in which wobbly synths command as much attention as syllable-crammed verses. During ‘Apparently’, ‘End Game’ and other standouts, rhymes fuse with high-tech beats, yielding a bracingly weird underground response to The Blueprint 3’s glitzy arena rap.
Hank Shteamer
Available in stores.