Cassette Review // Alien Trap Lords "3L3M3NT 115" (Hand'Solo Records)

$12 //
Edition of 200 //
https://handsolorecords.bandcamp.com/album/3l3m3nt-115 //

When I was young and impressionable with music, I was part of the cassette clubs (most of you might not even know what those are) and when you would get your featured selection you would have to pick a genre so I would always choose rap.   It brought me a lot of cassettes by artists I might not have otherwise found out about and in that same way, I feel like Hand'Solo Records is bringing out the best in rap I don't know about via cassette in a time when cassettes aren't the most popular form of music but still remain my favorite.

With steady beats, one of the only other albums I can think of which came out this year that comes close to this is by clipping. in terms of rap and hip hop.    Musically, this is just one of the most solid cassettes I've ever heard because it has these sounds that make for great beats but also there are sounds added in which I've not heard used this way before.   As the artists themselves say, this is future shit and it really is quite ahead of its time.

Along with the lunar eclipse and ideas of wearing tinfoil hats, the lyrics of Alien Trap Lords tend to stick to the idea of both their name (which at one point, they call themselves a band) and the cassette title itself as well.   If you're into that Area 51 scene (and I am) then this is the perfect cassette for you.   I didn't know such a thing as alien hip hop existed, but here it is and I feel like it's the perfect edition to my life right now.

There are also songs on here- as Hand'Solo likes to do- which are exclusive to the cassette, which I love because it makes for people to buy physical media and not just some stock in cyberspace.    If you're going to listen to a cassette about aliens I'm sure you have some kind of paranoia about having all of your "digital downloads" wiped from your database one day.   (Side Note: I'd actually heard rumors once that movies people had purchased through iTunes or some such site just started disappearing from their collections and that's always made me reluctant to rely solely on digital media)

At the end of this cassette you'll still hear the song "Gotta Go", which is a song about what the title says.   It's the only fitting way to end this cassette but moreso it has that double meaning of not just saying goodbye and having to leave, but you can imagine it being the end of this story to the point where Alien Trap Lords and beamed back up into their spaceship to return to their home planet.