Aesop Rock has been part of all sorts of projects in his long and varied career, both as emcee and producer, whether it be as a solo artist or as part of a group like Malibu Ken or The Uncluded, or scoring a movie like Bushwick. Now he can add video game composer to that list, as he now presents Music From The Game Freedom Finger.

Not that long ago, Aesop Rock was approached by Wide Right Interactive to make some music for an absurd space shooter game called Freedom Finger. He agreed and placed six instrumentals within the game. As rollout came around, the idea came up to do three more tracks, but this time fully fleshed out songs with lyrics, which would then be placed in new levels available as downloadable content. After recording those three tracks, it just felt natural to release the music packaged as a soundtrack, so Rhymesayers got on board and put everything together for this EP-ish project. What you get as a finished product is three songs, three instrumentals, and then four short beats that were looped within the game. Let’s start with the end first. The four short beats are just that – none of them are over thirty seconds in length, so it’s hard to judge them any more than just trying to imagine them being looped and flying a spaceship. I’m sure they are enjoyable in game, but you probably won’t spend that much time with them as part of the music release. That takes us to the three songs and instrumentals. The songs are certainly interesting – while trying to stay within the universe of the game, Aesop Rock still manages to weave in some interesting imagery and wordplay with lines like, “warfare, I don’t war fair, I like rocket fuel in my morning air/I like red buttons under iron fists, and my stunt doubles like ‘I quit.‘” The real key to the project, though, is the production that Aesop Rock is throwing down. It’s not anything out of the ordinary for what he’s done over the course of his career, but they are just three really good beats with just the right amount of weird sci-fi sounds that also bump really hard. Listening to the instrumentals, I could really picture myself getting hyped up while flying a spaceship through some absurd animated scenarios and having a good time.

Music From The Game Freedom Finger is one of the least expected projects from Aesop Rock in the course of his career, and despite the unusual way it was cobbled together to be something coherent as just a musical release, it works. This is largely because Aesop Rock is talented enough as both and emcee and producer that he manages to make some really good beats that work in a video game, and then he finds way to sneak in some really thought provoking lines when he adds lyrics about said game. Not just anyone could pull something like this off.