Baltimore artist Height Keech has been making music for a long time, but he’s been on a tear recently, with a string of releases that include his solo albums Raw Routes and Computer Rocker, along with a collaborative album with Philly artist Ialive called Timewave Zero. Now he teams up with D.C. emcee Ardamus to keep the hot streak going with an album called Astro Blocks.

If you’re familiar with Height Keech, you know that he tends toward the psychedelic with his production, and that’s certainly the base of what he’s doing here on Astro Blocks. To help shape the album towards Ardamus’s style, he’s also spacing things out a bit and bringing in some retro sci-fi sounds as well. This pairs extremely well with Ardamus on the mic, who has this really deliberate delivery that makes use of negative space while he’s rhyming. In use of that space in his flow, he’s constantly keeping you guessing where he might land, letting your brain start to fill in the obvious fit, while he zags and comes in with an off kilter fit to a line or verse. He also brings a balance of old school battle rhymes and sci-fi inspired raps that when combined with the production of what Keech is doing, the whole things reminds me a great deal of Beans, and I mean this in the best way possible. On top of all of this, we also get a great posse cut with Ialive and PT Burnem hopping on the mic on “Rock Salt,” one of the most fun tracks on the album.

Astro Blocks is another great addition to the Cold Rhymes catalogue, with Height Keech and Ardamus having fun and establishing great chemistry while keeping one foot in the past and the other stepping into the future. It’s psychedelic, old school, and futuristic, all at the same time, which is no easy feat.