CD Reviews

Koushik | Out My Window

Stones Throw (2008)

By GUSTAVO TURNER | September 23, 2008

3.0 Stars

I’m always fooled by that moment on the “White Album” when the volume drops and you think it’s your stereo but in fact it’s George Harrison’s spacy jewel “Long Long Long,” and that’s exactly how it’s meant to sound. Koushik’s years-in-the-making first proper album has many such moments — hardly a surprise, since this Canadian hip-hop head based in Vermont draws inspiration from both psychedelia and the sounds of his Indian-immigrant childhood. Koushik runs with the Peanut Butter Wolf/Madlib crowd, but his album is closer to the narcotic easy-listening vibe of Nobody and Languis or the jazzy grad-school prog of Four Tet and Matmos than to the J-Dilla tribute brigade. Although unshy about his background, he’s a subtle arranger, reluctant to play the Bollywood card (there’s not even a teaspoon of Asha). When it does surface, as in the coda to “See You,” it’s imperceptibly tweaked into little ripples of noise. His points of reference are classy ambient heroes like David Axelrod and My Bloody Valentine and, in the uplifting “Lying in the Sun” (hands down the album’s poppiest moment), the Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra (memorably sampled in the Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony”) tackling George Harrison’s “It’s All Too Much.” The real surprises come with the closing four tracks — a sort of suite encompassing the oddly bouncy “Bright and Shining” and the strange and moving title track plus two pure ambient passages — as Koushik finally attempts to transcend his impeccable record collection.