One of the most valued qualities in Hip-Hop is originality. No one wants to hear the same style, rhymes and beats over and over, so naturally the public will notice anyone different. Artists who would rather be noticed than revered take full advantage of this. In other words, rather than being one of the best, some emcees only try to not be like the rest. Combine this attitude with anarchic philosophy and production and lyrics both insane and inane and you have the Anti-Pop Consortium and their new album Arrhythmia. With the motto “disturb the equilibrium,” Antipop strives to change Hip-Hop by making music that violently pushes its limits.

While some groups like Jurassic 5 or People Under The Stairs bolster their styles by bringing Hip-Hop back to its organic roots, Antipop tries to distinguish itself by doing the opposite. Soldered together with grating electronic burps, alarm(ing) noises, and synth buzzes, Arrhythmia is a twisted sort of robotic Frankenstein. Antipop would of course be the mad scientists, and their obsession with experimentation is the best and worst part of the album. Some of the sounds they choose to put in come off as thrown in just for the hell of it, but some actually establish the melody. For example, the jingle bells and cricket sounds in “Silver Heat” are unnecessary, but the inventiveness of using Ping-Pong sounds (in full stereo) on the track “Ping Pong” transcends novelty and reaches a giddy nirvana with its bounce.

As deviant as their beats are, the Consortium’s rhymes push the limits of sense even further. Full of bizarre, fleeting imagery and harsh delivery, Antipop’s lines range from the somewhat disturbing to the hopelessly confusing. Sometimes they’ll beat a rhyme to death (“my symphonic monopoly philosophy sloppily etches notes awkwardly”) or ignoring it altogether (“I can write a rhyme where nothing rhymes…”). Sometimes they come off as amusingly peculiar with their references, with lines about ‘spraying freon on Celine Dion’ and such, but the songs don’t really make sense as a whole. Only when they tell stories are they close to intelligible, but even then they elect to rap about coke busts and the futility of killing soap scum.

Ultimately, Arrhythmia ends up disturbing the listener rather than the equilibrium. Most people look for music with some thought, emotion, or at least a nice melody, and the album is almost completely devoid of all these. It is interesting to hear something different, and some of the beats are decent, but everything else comes off strained. They’ve put such a weight on separation that the whole structure of their sound falters.