Fort Ancient Records is the Cincinnati collective of producers Homage CVG, Dren AD, Waldo From Cincinnati, Phonophage, and Samuel Steezmore. Over their short history, the full group has gotten together fairly regularly to deliver their series of short EPs, Fort Ancient Airlines, but it takes a little more to get all five together to make a full-length album. They did it in 2017 with Gatsby, and then again with First Team. Now they’re gotten back on the same page for their third go around, Zoo Heist.

With a title like Zoo Heist, and song titles like “Bear Cave” or “Gator Pit,” you might be expecting something of a novelty record, complete with sampled animal sounds spread throughout the album. This guess couldn’t be further from the reality of the album, which instead just takes the very abstract idea of a zoo and overlaps it with their idea of five distinct personalities coming together to work on a creative musical project. Or as they describe in their own explanation of the album, “Music is a wild thing; it must roam freely.” And so this is really just a beautiful, intricate, and understated instrumental hip hop album. It’s not going to spoon feed you anything, and there aren’t any bangers to be found, but what you will get out of this album is some really thoughtful and emotional instrumental hip hop. Building off jazz, bossa nova, soul, and more as source material, the artists of Fort Ancient are giving you a collection of songs that work on really subtle notes, revealing themselves slowly, but always building towards something. It’s an album that you can really get lost in and pick up on something new each time through, whether it be a clever flip of a guitar lick, or an unexpected transition between songs that might catch you off guard.

Zoo Heist might zig in one direction with the title, but if you follow the zag of the actual music on the album, you’ll be rewarded with some beautiful instrumental hip hop. It’s music that’s made with great care, and the chemistry between these five musicians is stellar.