In the last year of my brothers tenure at University, he would often talk to me about his friend who was a DJ/Producer/Engineer (I was an aspiring DJ at the time) who was writing his thesis that argued for the turntable as a legitimate musical instrument (for those interested… Turntablalist Transaction Method is a site that has made a lot of leaps in creating legitimate musical notation for scratching techniques).

Recently, I finally got to talk to this famous roomate and it turns out he’s still producing some great music. Working under the alias theLin, Josh Thelin creates heady hip-hop beats that wouldn’t sound out of place on an Eyedea & Abilities or DJ Shadow record. The kind of stuff that you want to listen to with your head phones because you don’t want to miss a single piece of the audio. Being the nice guy he is, Josh gave me the whole EP for his latest project “Metal On Metal” to share with all you Handsome readers.

It’s hard to pick my favorite songs off this thing because each song accomplishes such a different task, however, if forced I’d go with “New Junkfood” and “The 3rd Larry”.

“New Junkfood” starts off like it could be a long lost moody Prince song from “Purple Rain” but quickly turns into a nonstop headnodder with some nice thought-rap (best exemplified by the line “If only in the future people could fly / probably crash into a tower and die”).

Alternatively, “The 3rd Larry” starts of with a sample reminiscent of Beck’s “The New Pollution” that first morphs into a beautifully simple beat with that forgotten art of turntablism before finally adding some warm guitars as the cherry on top. The best metaphor for this song is a warm cup of coffee/tea in the morning.

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DOWNLOAD: theLin – New Junkfood

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DOWNLOAD: theLin – The 3rd Larry

OR just download the whole EP.