Walking alone late at night on the streets of a city is a recurring theme in pop music, as Eddie Money once showed us on "Take Me Home Tonight." New York's DJ Signify doesn't waste time talking about the surreal feel of urban loneliness. He just composes what it sounds like.
From the opening "Sickness," the tempo stays down, the synth drones and the drums sound hasty, like they're perched to escape. The mood isn't just lonely. It's a little freaky. The instrumental journeys are sometimes punctuated by the raps of Aesop Rock.
Depending on the track, Of Cities could be filed under hip-hop or electronic. And what makes the album worthwhile is that the genre seems irrelevant. This music is singular in its ambient purpose - to walk through concrete darkness in the most exhilarating way.
