In the origin days of hip hop the tools of the producer trade were the Roland TRs, the Akai MPCs, and SP-12s. By the late 90s the digital platforms of ProTools and Logic cleared the desk space for a desktop monitor and an Ableton pad. Nowadays no producer in their right mind lugs anything clunkier than a vintage Macbook to the studio. Residing in the crux of vintage and modern techniques is Drew Dave, who's faithful to the soul that lives in his Native Instruments Maschine but maintains forward vision for live instrumentation and midi-synths on his latest project, SynthBASED. Formerly known as Soulful!, Drew Dave shed the moniker after adopting the philosophy that soulfulness is implied. Some might attest to the soul of synthesizers and Drew Dave has the counter in the form of tracks like Jay Deesian bounce of "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" and breakbeat exoticism of Blockhead in "Red Flowers". With live instrumentation and vocal contributions from rappers Cortez and Kenn Starr, SynthBASED is not to be classified as a hermetic instrumental hip hop record. Blue Note piano loops colliding into rap toasts over afrobeat percussion on "Quarter Life Crisis (2-5)" speak to Drew Dave's aspirations for musicality over purging straight beats, but that doesn't exclude him from delivering bangers that loop the gravelly roars of DJ Kool on "Here We Go!". SynthBASED is a rhapsodic journey, in which Drew Dave has doodled over the syllabus, creating ornate embellishments of prerequisite texts.
