Dabrye

With a fearsome wheezing and creaking, the highly anticipated second installment of Ann Arbor, Michigan, producer Dabrye's trilogy, Two/Three, sounds more like an infernal machine than the feel-good hit of the summer. Dabrye builds on the bleak, industrial sound scrapes of producers like the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA by adding somber synths and other electronic flourishes learned from his techno heroes in nearby Detroit. Eschewing the sample-laden production style of so many other producers, Dabrye's productions are based on basic, electronically generated tones that are put through elaborate processing to create his alien rhythms. Dabrye's expressive talents on the boards are supported by the high-caliber lyrical comrades he was able to corral for this project. Be they names well known in the underground (MF Doom, Wildchild, Beans, Vast Aire) or local heroes on the rise (Kadence, Guilty Simpson, Ta'Raach), these MCs ride Dabrye's cosmic currents as well as the Silver Surfer. For the aurally adventurous, Two/Three will be an album hard to forget; as Doom intones on the album's first single, "Air," "The track was like a thorn in his back."