Toob is a new collaborative project between Red Snapper’ Rich Thair and Jake One, the big fish behind Flameboy Records. Squarely aimed at mainstream electronica audiences, these guys manage to make a cross genre album with pop sensibilities but informed by leftfield innovation.
Taking in trip hop, acid house, breakbeat, dub and electro sounds, live drums and full sounding bass and guitar samples are intermingled with oscillating synths and on about half the tracks there’ Beth Orton-ish vocalists. Although most of the tracks are incredibly loop based, there’ enough variation, depth and little quirks for it to survive out of a club environment—an Oompa-Loompa cameo, a bit of a glockenspiel solo and the like…
By no means is this a novel project, however, Toob manage to tread the line between accessibility and quality electronic production with dexterity. This is the kind of album that would be fantastic to shift people who are reasonably unadventurous with their listening habits into a more explorative space and charm many others.
