Album Review: Mike Shinoda - 'Dropped Frames Vol 1'
Mike Shinoda’s semi-collaborative, mostly-instrumental album is entirely, bizarrely, brilliant.
From being the multi-instrumentalist, rapper, co-frontman and oftentimes producer of musical leviathans Linkin Park to being an accomplished artist, possessing as he does a Bachelor of Arts in illustration, Mike Shinoda is immensely talented. His universally critically acclaimed debut solo album, Post Traumatic, is heart-breakingly powerful, and full of a host of featured artists that elevates the album from simply amazing into a smorgasbord of brilliance.
Now, once again, Mike Shinoda has turned his hand to a new project and once again the project has turned out to be as wondrous as anyone could hope. The recently released Dropped Frames Vol. 1 has been in the pipeline for months, at least in one form or another: it is a collaborative album created over lockdown, influenced entirely by fans and viewers on Twitch, made up of songs created on stream every week. For the past few months, viewers could earn ‘ShinodaBucks’ by watching Mike Shinoda’s channel on the streaming service Twitch, all of which could then be redeemed for prizes relating to the content. A certain amount, for instance, could be redeemed to ask the man himself a question, or to suggest a genre that could be put in a bowl for Mike to make a song out of. Unsurprisingly, the number of genres suggested quickly outweighed the time available; as such, Mike started to mash the different ideas together, making dozens of tracks. Some of these, then, made it onto this insanely diverse album — and the vol. one suffix in the title suggests more to come!
For instance, partway down the track listing comes ‘El Ray Demonio’, a track created on stream after plucking the ideas of ‘Mariachi Hip Hop’ and ‘Horror Hip Hop’ from his bowl. The idea sounds horrific; yet in practice it’s brilliant. The traditional trumpets and guitars of the Mariachi are ensnared by what seems to be incomprehensible whispers, faint screams and a tight drum beat that holds it all together. Similarly, early offering Super Galaxtica has an almost extraterrestrial quality about it, with reverberating blasts of eerie sound under a constant hammering from a deceptively simple yet incredibly effective drum beat; a few small elements combining to form a surprisingly haunting track. Not bad for an entirely instrumental song, especially one in which the base loop stems from a sequencer created from an old Nintendo Game Boy.
This is a staying theme throughout the album. There’s the ‘Bollywood Hip Hop’ of Cupcake Cake — a personal highlight, if just simply for the insanely good transition to a more electronic sound halfway through — or the Egyptian-esque Osiris, an apt name considering the menacingly dark crash of what seems to be overly distorted cymbals and some heart palpitation-inducing drums, which started simply as a looped flute melody. Very ‘god of judgement and death’.
“Dropped Frames is just as much about the live channel as it is about the ‘album’,” he explains. “The collection of songs is a highlight reel of the tracks I make on the channel, but a big part of the experience is the stream itself. When I start, I usually have very little idea of where it will go. What comes out is a product of the viewers’ suggestions, my spur-of-the-moment ideas, and whatever inexplicable magic is floating in between.”
Magic is right.
Yet it’s on the opener that the album really shines, as an almost family-like affair. Hundreds of fan generated vocal submissions were sent in, and seven have been featured alongside the Linkin legend in the only song with his vocals on, ‘Open Door’. The track is resoundingly cathartic in its positivity, about not simply settling for what life offers and instead always pushing for the next step up; rather than listening to the naysayers that tell you to quit trying, listening to self-defeating negativity, believe in yourself and ‘never stop running’. Under normal circumstances, it would be a resounding success, an inspirational hit to provide a shot of hope in these uncertain times. Open Door, however, is not simply ‘normal’. Instead, the fan submissions offer a sense of humility from the multi award-winning artist and, on top of the sense of community the fan-inspired songs offer, now even act as a gateway for talented new artists.
Dropped Frames is a fantastic album. It might not be to everyone’s tastes — for the most part it’s wholly instrumental, and each and every song is completely (and sometimes near irreconcilably) different — but that’s okay. Perfection is subjective, and to the thousands of people who played a part in making it, it could not be any better.
Here’s hoping for volume 2!
Words by James O’Sullivan