Okapi Loves Aldo Kapi

Italian turntablist and sampling artist Okapi answers the question what would happen if you threw a thousand records into a Slap Chop, chopped them up, and then attempted to reassemble them back together. Using more records, samples, scratching, editing and just plain craziness than you can think of Okapi has become the Don of slicing and dicing sounds together to get all sorts of new sounds that sound like their own sub-genre of music. I'm not exactly sure how he does what he does, but it's impressive that he can construct sound collages as convincingly good as he does and he does it repeatedly on his album Love Him Okapi Plays the Music of Aldo Kapi.

Love Him is a heady mix of samples that assault your hearing from every angle. It's like chopped, diced, and pureed into a series of blips, bleeps, beats, found sounds, and more all to the tune of something approaching a real song. He doesn't always get there but it's truly fascinating to hear just how weird Okapi gets on each song. It's not like much of what you're hearing on Love Him makes much sense, but my guess is that it's not supposed to and that's the point. Chaotic and literally all over the place, this is the soundtrack to the inner workings of a tornado. Love Him has it all, from animal sounds to car crashes to lounge music, it's all in there and finds a home next to thirty other sounds that don't really belong.

Okapi might scare a few people with his disorganized and atonal approach to making music. Thankfully for everyone's sanity he manages not to get lost in his ocean of samples, but he does rearrange stuff to the point where you can't really hear what songs he's sampled, chopped, or rearranged. It's insane stuff that's a tribute to his editing, turtablism, and creative skills. Love Him isn't music in the conventional sense but that's what makes it entertaining. I thouroughly enjoyed listening to the inner workings of Okapi's mind throughout Love Him, he's a fascinating "songwriter," and his "songs," are pretty ingenious and mini-marvels.