It takes a certain point in an artist’s career – after having already developed a rich, personal vocabulary and a command of his tools – to take an inward look and render a self-portrait that is sincere, accurate, and profoundly complex.  Richard Alexander Caraballo (minusbaby) has done that with his new album, Left, which reads like a traveler’s journal for his firing synapses.

Left could be the uncovered études of a late 20^th century analog synth experimenter, but intermixed with hip-hop and samba grooves, it is an artifact of the unique outlook of this self-aware, NYC native, deftly moving back and forth between his local and global influences. Monkey Patch (2003) was a playful concept album built around simian references, and Saudade for Beginners (2008), a melancholic stroll steeped in Brazilian rhythms and funk, showed a huge, compositional leap forward.  In contrast to his earlier 8bitpeoples (“8BP”) releases, rather than look outward for inspiration, Richard has turned his inner world (or his alter ego as minusbaby, though there’s no indication that he keeps them separate) into the central theme for Left.

The titles insinuate a timeline of milestones, but to think these are mapped-out steps would betray the abstract topography of the author’s extended rumination, an album with a 21-minute span constructed in movements, not so much as songs.  Caraballo has distilled his experiences and identifying markers into six iterations that sound like a textured, electric field.  Listeners will find themselves enmeshed in his studied grasp of 8-bit orchestration, knowing hints of his earlier, recognizable tracks, and styled, external influences, most apparent in the shifting rhythms woven into constant and insistent bass lines.  There is a density in composition that is a mature extension of a technique Richard has been using since Monkey Patch (listen to “Hazardous Salamander” with its oscillating drone and accompanying melody). That same density, however, risks drowning out the subtleties in the interlaced melodies at times, leaving behind only the major musical arcs: ascendant, descendant, and transcendent.  The committed explorer will find it more rewarding to find some good speakers or headphones and listen to it all the way through in one sitting.

This album is only limited by its brevity, a consequence of 8BP’s signature 3”-CD release format, allowing for fewer standout and standalone moments. Still, Caraballo, ever the opportunist, uses Left as a departure point to initiate a remix project that will debut in installments. The first, based on the second cut, “A Large Part of Your Mind Sliced,” has already been released, paving the way for subsequent, reflexive portraits. Intent on disregarding boundaries, Richard laid out only one direction: it was a simple statement about the evolutionary success of the half-breed over the purebred. By enlisting mutually respected musicians, minusbaby will get to see how well his musical DNA can live on beyond the album’s limits, subject to these same forces of fragmentation and reconstruction that help define our contemporary identities. Richard’s, of course, is tinted an unmistakable ‘minusbaby blue.’

— October 21, 2009