Parts And Labor – Escapers Two (Ace Fu)
Professional/personal whatever aside, Parts and Labor’s Mapmaker got multiple Idolator editors/contributors/hangers-on gushing last year, even if not everyone on staff was down with the album’s mix of classic art-pop/punk moves and circuitry made to squeal in service of killer hooks. Though recognizable as the same band from BJ Warshaw and Dan Friel’s voices and the splurting fuzz of the sing-song keyboard/bass melodies, Escapers Two is less Mapmaker’s follow-up than a five-dozen-and-one-track detour into self-dubbed “grindpop”–sadly some no mark seems to have beaten them to the slightly more shameless “power pop violence”–catchy ditties sometimes no longer than the seconds it takes to bleat a title like “Knee Deep In Compromise” over the pedal-busting beats of metal’s speediest sub-genre. So yeah, it’s a conceptual hoot, but it’s also re-playable in a way the cheeky conceit might not suggest, isolating Mapmaker’s most anthemic moments (dig the headbanging/fist-pumping “Lucky Times,” for example) and shaving down the bridges and build-ups and breakdowns and other indulgent stuff like that. (Indulgent if you’re trying to keep things under a minute, anyway.) The key is that the band doesn’t ditch them entirely in their quest for harder-faster-louder LOLz. (P.S. As far as I know this is currently only available at the recently expanded band’s merch table with wider release to follow; going to shows to buy records may seem delightfully pre-Web 1.0, but both EP and performance are more than worth venturing out for during the last few weeks of winter hibernation.)

Parts And Labor [Official Site]

Iron Lung – Sexless/No Sex (Prank)
Speaking of blasting concepts, it’s hard to call this sick paean to pit bruises “how they did it in the old days,” since grindcore/hardcore is all but deathless; there probably hasn’t been a single month since Napalm Death’s Scum (or maybe a certain Siege record) that some crusty collective hasn’t devoted their off-hours to tweaking the sound’s platonic 30-second blurt (or at least paying slavish homage to Mick Harris’ muscle control). And though I’d be lying if I said that this well-named LP from arch Seattle anti-romantic twosome Iron Lung didn’t trigger certain happy memories of ’90s evenings spent slapping hams with nasty natty dreads out of the way in church basements–and with a sleeve by Rudimentary Peni’s manic-obsessive doodler Nick Blinko, Iron Lung do value hardcore tradition–Sexless/No Sex is 2008 enough to thrill even those of neck-deep in scene history. Still, fans invariably know the various modes of attack: sometimes tunes like “White Flag” cut five or 10 seconds of down-tuned agony with spasms of grimy, hyper bass drum; sometimes, as on “Autojector,” they let the fast shit fly in the first half and then downshift into slow and low for a vulgar display of just how loud two dudes can get; sometimes it’s all spazz and no sludge.

Iron Lung [MySpace]

Young Dro – I Am Legend (Grand Hustle Mixtape)
The most pleasurable disc here for fans of grooves allowed to bump for more than a minute at less than 180 beats-per, locked-down homebody T.I.’s Scrabble partner Young Dro follows up 2006’s great Best Thang Smokin’ with this dense mixtape beset by the usual problems (you’ll invariably prune a few of the 25 tracks on your own second spin) but worth copping for Dro’s much-beloved, unhinged aspirational metaphors and schizo shit-talk, both of which frequently go beyond workaday boasts and beef into the best kind of batshittery. Dro, whose next-level tipsy mumble is winning a one-man war against up-north gripes about enunciation, professes his devotion to dining on the catch of the day every day, exhibits a worrying upholstery fetish, shops for birds at Petsmart, swipes from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” for a chorus, explains the difference between mousse and moose during a defense of his own grooming habits, and taxes the imaginations of the folks at Pantone and Behr and Maaco as noted in great, approving detail here. (Though the day he drops “muffin mix” to describe his glove compartment is when it’s really all over.) And heavy on the earbud-mocking low-end and light on hooks by the miserly one-note keyboard standards of many southern rap mixtapes, I Am Legend will likely pass or fail for first-time listeners on Dro’s flow and comic twists on convention alone.

Young Dro [MySpace]

10. Lost Ones – DJ Noodles and Jay-Z
9. Legends Never Die – D.J. Clue and Stack Bundles
8. Geek’d Up Music – Fabo and Young Dro
7. A Tribute to James Brown: The Foundation of Hip-Hop – DJ Premier
6. Da Drought 3 – Lil Wayne
5. The Moral of the Story – Saigon
4. March 9th – Notorious B.I.G.
3. Live Free or Die Hard – Don Cannon and Freeway
2. Do the Right Thing – Clinton Sparks and Kardinal Offishal
1. Warlordz – Dirty Harry

Ten Best Hip-Hop Mixtapes Of 2007 [Vulture]