Bird Peterson

You'll never hear Bird Peterson's first album. The local producer had 2007's Hot Noise wiped from the Internet, because it didn't live up to his standards. After an everlasting binge of singles, EPs, and mixtapes, including Mad Decent's Drankenstein trap series, the Austin beatmaker aces his mulligan with new debut LP Plume, original compositions injecting hip-hop swagger into the electro dimension. "Maybe" throws down an ultra gangster tuba line, but only after a suspenseful piano prelude winds into a cliffhanger EDM drop. And when Minneapolis poet Astronautalis grabs the mic to trace the infiltration of club drugs into hip-hop with "Sugarface," it's a match made in heaven. Peterson's bold strokes of production – Southern hustle hi-hats and a horn-warped hook – circumnavigate the indie MC's poignant verses. Rising electro-pop songwriter Rush Midnight also plants a flag on Plume, but it's Peterson's local collaborators who steal the show: Vocal trio Keeper recall Nineties R&B on the ethereal "Not Again," and rap goofballs Space Camp Death Squad defile nursery rhymes on FTW track "Chuck Roast." Peterson, meanwhile, spreads his wings with spaceship techno ("Puberty") and shimmering dance ("Alive") on instrumentals that cement his status as Austin's pacesetter of the thinking man's EDM.