Nick Hook - Relationships

Pitchfork 70

The cover art for Relationships features a photo of an entryway, nearly every inch of its canary yellow walls covered in signatures, writing and drawings. The photo was taken inside of Nick Hook’s studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where the producer has recorded and worked with a laundry list of hip-hop and electronic artists over the years, including Run the Jewels, Young Thug, and Action Bronson. Relationships, his debut album, feels a lot like that studio must: a place where Hook endlessly tinkers as a constant stream of guests passes through, each leaving behind bits of their sound. In keeping with Hook’s penchant for collaboration, Relationships enlists an impressive roster of artists: the freshly Drake-co-signed 21 Savage, the Deftones’ Chino Moreno, electro wunderkind Hudson Mohawke and even the late DJ Rashad. To hear him tell it, Hook didn’t pay for any of these features, relying instead on the goodwill accrued through years of production and engineering work.

Given the diverse company he keeps, it should come as no surprise that Hook’s debut is an eclectic listen. That said, Relationships manages to hang together surprisingly well, anchored in large part by Hook’s rhythmic and melodic sensibilities. Hook is a collector of vintage studio equipment and it shows: The sounds of analog synths suffuse these songs with warmth, while much of the drum programming has a tactile, human feel. Also old-fashioned is the manner in which Relationships was constructed: all of these collaborations were recorded in person at Hook’s studio, rather than cobbled together from emailed files.

Clearly, Hook is a big believer in chemistry, and this collaborative spirit tends to bring out his best. Over the course of Relationships, Hook allows his guests to pull his sound in a number of different directions, ultimately showcasing his own versatility. “Gucci’s” pitches up emerging Atlanta rapper 24hrs’ vocals into cartoon-character territory, the end result sounding like a trap banger crossbred with early Kanye’s chipmunk soul. “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” a bleak grime number featuring 19-year old London rapper Novelist, colorfully evokes London’s wet streets: Hook’s synths alternately patter like raindrops and howl like sirens as Novelist raps with hungry-upstart fury. “Another Way” arrives at funky body music by way of cosmic synths, while “All Alone” matches Makonnen’s late night tomcat croon with the proper shade of noir. Given 21 Savage’s involvement and its title, you can probably guess what “Head” is about; more surprising is how exuberant the song feels—bass drum hits that pop like confetti-filled balloons, skittering hi-hats, glimmering synth lines. It’s a genuinely fun song, one where Savage sounds delightfully out-of-place, like a dead-eyed hustler at a child’s birthday party.

Relationships is bookended by two collaborations with the footwork pioneer DJ Rashad, culled from sessions Hook recorded with Rashad before his untimely death. Opening track “+ 3,” which also features DJ Paypal, has Rashad’s fingerprints all over it: classic house synths, a tug-of-war between a thudding low-end and rapid-fire hi-hats and a mantra-like chant, provided by Nasty Nigel: “Pull up/Back door/ID/Plus three.” Album closer “The Infinite Loop,” meanwhile, ends the record on a very different note. Good luck finding Rashad’s contribution in the folds of the impressionistic track, which builds up slowly over the course of eighteen minutes, guided primarily by washes of chiming, delayed guitar provided by Chino Moreno. Nasty Nigel returns here, with a brief, nostalgic verse that steers into the track’s dreamy atmospherics: “Copping 40s at the Wawa outside of Philly/I was only 14, kinda high, my uncle with me.” Even if it hardly sounds like a DJ Rashad song, “The Infinite Loop” feels like a fitting tribute, a contemplative remembrance of a relationship that animated Hook’s work, like so many of those on display here.