Though hip-hop is about as self-referencing as genres get, every so often a producer emerges whose tastes are so left-field that you wonder whether he even listens to much rap music. Ed Cayce, of the Milwaukee duo The Hollowz, is one of those producers. On the group's latest album, Dreams of Sex and Flying, Cayce supplied rapper Logic with a backdrop of unsettled beats that took cues from horror-film scores and ambient electronic music. Cayce runs with those influences on his new instrumental album, Fears of Sex and Flying, which downplays hip-hop rhythms (and in its more minimalist moments, fades them out altogether) in favor of tenebrous mood pieces that suggest a more somber, inward RJD2 or DJ Shadow.
The album is now streaming at The Hollowz's Bandcamp page.
