Adam “Doseone” Drucker stands out as one of the more eccentric members of the already-out-there Anticon Collective. His work with cLOUDEAD and Deep Puddle Dynamics pushed hiphop to its formal outer limits, exploring a dark, introverted psychedelia and an abstract lyrical bent.
With Subtle, Drucker folds his bizarre vocals into the delicate, shifting instrumental arrangements of a white-hot live band. The results range from airy atmospheres and broken spoken word to tense rhythms and dense raps, all bound by Drucker’s lyrical vision and the musicians’ experimental prowess.
Subtle emerged in 2001 with Summer, the first of four seasonally titled EPs they would release over the course of the next two years. These EPs, collected as Earthsick, see Subtle stretching out in the studio and honing their sound. Summer relies on mellow textures for its slow, drawn-out songs, but Winter‘s untitled tracks are even more spare and ambient, barely sketches of songs. With Autumn and Spring, Subtle begin to construct substantial songs from this aural esoterica, locking their ethereal tones to beats and highlighting Drucker’s vocals.
In 2004, Subtle released their first proper full-length, A New White, perfecting their combination of sampladelia and post-beat poetry.
A CD/DVD collection of remixes and originals, 2006’s Wishingbone, attempts to satiate fans as they wait for Subtle’s upcoming For Hero: For Fool (Lex/Astralwerks). That album’s first single, “The Mercury Craze,” features a remix from the Soft Pink Truth and a B-side collaboration with Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner (“Middleclass Haunt”). All of which points toward a continued fascination with the genre-bending musical exploration Subtle’s fans have come to expect.
Subtle make an odd, but welcome, act for Decibel. Their music isn’t strictly electronic, and, though they play with elements of America’s dominant popular musical form (hiphop), they’re not exactly “electro pop.” In concert, their sound depends as much on live instrumentation as on electronic manipulations, and with six performers onstage Subtle stand to deliver one of Decibel’s most engaging and “live” shows. 