Various Artists: Urban Renewal Program

The city — in my case New York City — is not a passive setting. One doesn’t simply move through it on the way to work. You must grapple with it, smell it, hear it and physically wrestle with your co-inhabitants on the subway platforms, in the cars, and on the sidewalks. Just crossing the street demands a kind of urban athleticism. Keeping an eye out for the commuters and delivery trucks beating the lights, lawless bicyclists, oblivious cell phone-gabbers, and generally disgruntled workers cannonballing to the office, while feet feel for the dips in the asphalt from repairs upon repairs — the City exacts a price for whatever reason it is that one has to live in it. If you accept it, it’s navigable, and reveals charms and powers to set the balance against the grind. If you don’t, you’re left to scurry unhappily in the cracks of its juggernaut rhythms.

Urban Renewal Program is a compilation based around these irresistible forces, released by the respected underground Chicago label Chocolate Industries. The first of a proposed four CDs, this one features exclusive contributions from the cutting edge of hip-hop (Mr. Lif, El-P, RjD2) and minimalist or “post-rock” (Tortoise, Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto) with the overall premise of documenting “the daily journey of the urban occupant” in sound.

It’s fitting that a cutting-edge indie hip-hop compilation should draw heavily from the Def Jux roster, and the most satisfying moments on the disc belong to El-P (Deadlight) and Mr. Lif (Wanted). El-P in particular has a flow that scatters accents across the beats like a great jazz drummer — the sub-rhythms he creates are refreshingly unpredictable. His lyrical content, including pop culture references to the microscopic Force-creating beings of the recent set of Star Wars movies and Thomas Pynchon’s mammoth novel Gravity’s Rainbow, makes for a dazzling second layer to the syncopated flow of syllables. Lif and Aesop Rock live up to their considerable reputations, as does Prefuse-73 in the instrumental realm. RjD2’s “True Confessions” doesn’t match the quality of his Def Jux debut — it’s too much of a gimmick revolving around dialog snippets of a thief’s confession to a priest — and the heavy metal samples, including a blazing hair-metal guitar solo mid-track, don’t sound too cool, even in the new context. The While track, Haze-3, which follows “True Confessions”, makes up for it. Dark phased drums lock in perfectly with a two-note dub bass line, a murky electric piano, and a great industrial percussive sample that recurs as the track’s main hook.

In an interesting move, Chocolate Industries includes hometown indie scene-generators Tortoise, who contribute the moody “C.T.A.”. It brings the band into full IDM territory, with every conventionally created rock sound run through a fine-toothed software guillotine. The track features a repeating, somewhat harmonically involved melody over a soft-rock samba bass line. It’s not heavy on development — the only things that change over its five minutes are the degree of processing on the sounds and the dynamics — which makes it a bit disappointing. Spacey instrumental hip-hop producer Caural contributes “Our Solstice Walk”, which shares the same loungy-electronic territory as “C.T.A.”, but with a cool end-of-the-night dance vibe. It has a warmer, less stiltedly robotic sound, and features an odd little four-note flute melody over a carpet of hissing hi-hats, crisp snare drums, and a shimmering electric piano. Cibo Matto singer Miho Hatori splits the difference between the Tortoise and Caural tracks with “Night Light”, a smooth-soul vocal performance over a minimal electronic production that accounts for a seemingly very upscale urban experience — something like Lali Puna or some of the tracks from Dntel’s Life Is Full of Possibilities.

The high quality of the overall production, including the pacing of the album and the short interludes that stitch the tracks together, bring the weaker tracks up. Overall, the idea comes to fruition — Urban Renewal Program is a nearly cinematic view of urban life in music.