David Ramos - This Up Here

Listening to “This Up Here” leaves the impression that David Ramos couldn’t focus on one sound he liked.

	May 07, 2008

 

Instead of releasing albums over the course of a couple of years, he opted to show us who he really is and put it all in one album.

Well, David Ramos has a lack of cohesion. He likes New Age. He likes Linkin Park. He likes banjos and glockenspiels.

The albums starts off slow – really slow. Any form of build up drags its feet at a crawling pace - “One Last Stop” is a gospel told from a porch with a banjo, which becomes a sort of transition to Ramos breaking into a spoken word diatribe against life and heaven. “From Your Cup” has a choir and it becomes a redeeming point, but it’s short lived as “Face Full” brings back the rapping Ramos and leaves the visionary artist behind. The last four tracks meld the entire thing together and it’s sort of an honest portrait of what Ramos is getting across. The guy is a genius – he self produced the entire thing and in this day and age where albums are over edited for the sake of making a buck, well he’s a new flavor of soda.

Ramos has a bright future. He’s doing what the producers behind The Gorillaz did, but it’s all Ramos.

 

By Nathan Solis