Innerstance.Beatbox: Tekniques EP

On his third sonic outing, Jason Todd, member of the abstractionist electro-hop group Def Harmonica, keeps it relatively brief under his moniker Innerstance.Beatbox on the five-song Tekniques. The EP, which caters more to its A-side of the same title by including the dirty, clean and instrumental versions of the track, appears as a bone’s throw to DJ’s and eager fans, with each song serving as its own docile territory in lieu of coalescing into a full-length, as with his previous releases All Little Boys Do Silly Little Dances and Your Eyes Are Like UFO’s My Darling. The title track features rapper Kerse 1, who lyrically rides Todd’s ’80s funk bounce with lines like “Hardcore terror, he write that / Venom in the verse that’ll bite back,” but despite the pensive rhymes, Todd maintains his musical ground with mildly progressive backdrops. On the acerbic “Blue Skies Grey”, Todd sticks to samples as he suffuses the popping groove with a ghostly vocal clip, allowing the track to take form while it spreads over five minutes of bump. While the other tracks take the hip-hop and instrumental high road, “Angel Bomb” plays with time signatures as Todd builds a jazzy smoke groove in 4/4 time, filling each measure with rhythmic triplets while Def Harmonic’s Lunaversol9 smooth-talks her way through the track. By the end of the record’s play, Tekniques may come off as a bit too eclectic for a five-track EP, but fortunately for Innerstance.Beatbox, a future full-length may put these songs into context.