More Is Than Isn't

RJD2’s career has been most interesting. He’s assimilated unlikely genres and explored them so comfortably that the fans who discovered him with Deadringer are likely as confused as someone who orders peanut butter and gets jelly. RJD2 works with soul and pure funk music and (much more jarring to the DJ world), indie singer/songwriter forms. Together, this is likely to come across as eclectic madness to folks obsessed with new sounds. But More Is Than Isn’t is an extraordinarily well-paced survey of all the sounds under the RJD2 banner. “Suite 1,” “Suite 2," and “Suite 3” are gentle electronic new age breathers that serve as a base level from which all else springs. “Bathwater” (with Columbus rapper P. Blackk) jump-cuts the commercial hip-hop world against indie hip-hop’s very different efforts and ideas. Instrumental pieces like “Milk Tooth” and “Winter Isn’t Coming” illustrate RJD2’s sense of freedom. There’s nothing here as pop-like as moments from The Third Hand, but “It All Came to Me in a Dream” sounds pretty complete, even before MC Blueprint shows up to fill us in.