Psymun is a producer from Minneapolis who has been releasing music for several years now. Over the years, he’s collaborated with a few musicians, most notably on a full length album with vocalist K.Raydio. While he’s released some smaller projects in recent years, it’s been four years since his last full-length release. Now he finally comes through with TAPE.

TAPE is an interesting project, in that it kind of plays like an old-school mixtape. By that I mean that this plays like a collection of interesting ideas – not necessarily fully formed songs – that come together to form something of a sound collage. It doesn’t sound quite like a modern beat tape, because it doesn’t feel like ready-to-go beats, it sounds more like Psymun has been collecting his weirdest and more experimental stuff that he couldn’t quite figure out what to do with, or how to make them into complete songs. When he puts them all together, it forms this really intriguing hodgepodge of sounds, where downtempo meets noise meets house meets Bollywood meets scifi and so on. There are a few points here and there where some emcees hop on to rock the mic, including deM atlaS, Chester Watson, Medhane, and Kent Loon, and again it’s that mixtape feel – they’re dropping verses and rocking with a weird beat and having fun with it, but no one’s concerned with developing things with hooks, choruses, or whatnot – it’s just beats and lyrics for the heads. As a result, TAPE does require a little bit of patience to listen to, or at least an inkling towards the weirder side of hip hop, but there are so many interesting ideas spread throughout, it’s well worth the time.

TAPE might not be the fully formed full-length album we’ve been waiting for from Psymun, but it’s still a fun and challenging listen as a mixtape. There are a lot of ideas coming in from left field, and there’s plenty of variety to keep you on your toes. It won’t be for everybody, but adventurous listeners of instrumental hip hop will surely be into it.