Album Review: For Professional Use Only [Mixtape] by AraabMuzik

Forget the title of AraabMuzik's new mixtape and look at the cover for a second. That's the producer/DJ/MPC wizard rocking the Sahara Tent at Coachella last year: It was not only one of the wildest shows I had the pleasure of witnessing in 2012, it was the culmination of one of the strangest career arcs in recent memory. If you initially viewed Abraham Orellana's 2011 breakthrough Electronic Dream as a hip-hop producer making an instrumental record, it did what it was meant to-- it got Araab a lot more work.

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Although AraabMUZIK is reportedly working with EDM heavyweights Skrillex and Diplo for his forthcoming LP, the MPC mastermind’s newest instrumental offering, appropriately dubbed For Professional Use Only, is a 20-track audio portfolio for the broader music industry’s lyricists, rappers, producers, and labelheads. The instrumental mixtape doesn’t share the cohesion of the his highly touted debut full-length Electronic Dream, choosing instead to wander through the aural fields of dance music. The road-tested Araab formula is still in place: punching micro-samples, haunting subterranean synth lines, vocal manipulation, and wall-rattling basslines.

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