Sardashhh
ok.keys
(Self-released)
B
In a lot of ways, Vol. 2, the sophomore effort of Oklahoma producer Sardashhh, felt like a closing argument. Not that he’s been doing this so long as to need to close a chapter; his 2013 debut, The Feast, was mostly the soulful beatmaker getting his feet wet, splashing plenty of promise and only occasionally coming up dry. And while something as masterful as Vol. 2 felt possible, to achieve it so soon was as conclusive as a knockout punch. It was our favorite local album of 2014, and a movement-defining one at that (given the stark lack of experimental electronic tradition pre-2013). So where do you go from there? Do you seek to match it note for note, as so many young artists have before? Do you pivot entirely, as to shirk all expectations?
Wisely, Sardashhh does a little bit of both on ok.keys, an album that still breathes and exhales the same air as his buoyant (and rather formidable) back catalog but placed inside a different room. It’s every bit the complement to its predecessor. This isn’t the Friday night whirr of lights, drinks, love and conversation swirled and lined together in a series of flash cuts that was Vol. 2; this is music for the morning after, a comedown that is more reflective and content than yearning to live that night all over again. As an artist, Sardashhh comes off that way, too — matured and confident enough to be happy with the contained structure organically manifested in ok.keys without affixing trinkets to the facade to make it resemble what was built before.
His third LP didn’t need catharsis, and he quells any tendency to indulge in one. It’s tranquil and assured, drifting toward somber in tightly sewn pockets and pieced together with piano-driven loops — the sort of crackled-vintage but very present sound of what J Dilla might have boiled up for a James Blake record. Never in its 16 tracks does it go passive, though. Sardashhh contends there is plenty of wiggle room even while operating within a narrowed scope, with hazily meshed, jazz-indebted hip-hop splices rocking between the rails in subtly distinct grooves. It’s a sort of cocoon, a spindly coating that shivers on the verge of hatching, with pops of color and more energetic shakes (“5spot”) that stop just short of full bloom.
Brisk and breezy, it ebbs between urban midnight jaunts soundtracked by the bleed-over of jazz clubs and the bustle of the pedestrian traffic (“pryz,” “new block”) and days spent poolside before it’s truly warm enough to slink into the waters below (“richie simmz,” “nova’s on”). As has always been the case with a Sardashhh album, ok.keys is about the collection of moments and not any singular ones, its highlights existing mostly in the context of the transmissions leading into and out of them. The exceptions being “$4 gear 1&2” and “bushiki,” each playing like a Run the Jewels jam shot with an elephant tranquilizer — violent warbles giving way to celestial hallucinations. Sardashhh covers an entire spectrum with barely a single bead of sweat dribbling down his brow, offering up more than a little evidence that he’s got plenty more places to take us before he’s done.
