One of the best things that Fat Beats has done is launch their Baker’s Dozen series a couple of years back. In case you’re not familiar, this is a series of instrumental albums in which producers make an album thirteen songs long. It sounds simple enough in practice, but we’ve been fortunate enough to get some really interesting entries from producers like Dibia$e, Ohbliv, Ras G, Daedelus, and most recently, Budamunk. For the latest addition to the series, Fat Beats goes north of the border and enlists one of Toronto’s most respected producers, Elaquent.

Elaquent has built up his reputation over the course of this decade with some killer albums such as Green Apples and Oranges or Celebrate Life, which blended hip hop, house, and other styles of electronic music into his own unique flavor. On Baker’s Dozen, we get a crash course in everything great about Elaquent, as he takes us through thirteen beautiful, genre-bending tracks. What makes Elaquent especially good is not just the ways in which he’s able to move across genres, but the ways in which he’s able to really develop his songs and craft these instrumental compositions that really stick with long after the album is over. He’s also able to pay respects and refence acts like J Dilla and A Tribe Called Quest while still writing songs that are completely his own, and he’s able to bring in elements like 8-bit production without skipping a step. He’s able to do this because his songwriting is so strong, and because he’s so sure of who he is as an artist. He’s not messing around and experimenting with beats and samples, he’s giving us a musical experience that comes together over the course of the album to move you, both physically and emotionally. It’s the type of album that is very easy to get lost in, only to have the album end before you were ready.

When Fat Beats announced this addition to the Baker’s Dozen series, it felt like a perfect match. Now that it’s here, it more than meets any expectations I had for it. Elaquent has given us yet another strong and unique instrumental album to add to his catalogue.