The Reliable Narrators

Feedback first caught a set by the Reliable Narrators in February while working as a judge at Ty Cooper’s “Virginia Got Talent?” competition. The local duo was only a few months into making music at the time, but Dave “Hypothesis” Glover and Lorenzo “Linz Prag” Best nabbed a second place finish on the strength of the tracks like the revved up “Dirt Bike” and the arcade meltdown of “Wildn Out.”

Reliable work ethic: Emcees Lorenzo “Linz Prag” Best (left) and Dave “Hypothesis” Glover of Reliable Narrators drop a slew of space beats and android vocals on their Best of Robot Musick mixtape and upcoming Tales From Space album.

Glover and Best, both Charlottesville High School graduates, met with Feedback last week to talk about their time as the Narrators (“Rockin’ 808s since 8/08”) and their upcoming Tales From Space album. Despite mixtape tracks like the Lil Wayne-referencing “‘A Milli’ Killer,” the duo comes from the Weezy School of Work Ethic, where free music begets hype for more music, at any cost. A two-volume mixtape series, Best of Robot Musick, beat Space to the streets and is available for download now, and a mixtape follow-up is currently in the works.

Tales From Space casts Glover and Best as an alien and robot, respectively, in a glitchy space odyssey narrative. (“We kinda come here symbolizing ‘the other,’” Glover says of the album’s story.) The Narrators themselves, however, have their feet planted in the terra firma of Charlottesville music history: Glover and Best are contemporaries of hip-hop musicians like Quentin “Q*Black” Walker and speak reverentially of The Beetnix, but also worked explicitly in rock for years. Glover’s high school band was called Elephant Man; “Zo,” as Glover calls him, played guitar in a group named Have A Cigar, named for the Pink Floyd tune.

For an act that aims occasionally for high concept, the Narrators are also decidedly low maintenance, if not lo-fi. Best handles production for every track, and renders every beat from freeware like Fruity Loops before adding vocals and mixing in Pro Tools. The pair has “played sparingly,” according to Glover, but has rocked venues as varied as its influences, from Outback Lodge to The Box to Dust, with no more than an iPod touch and microphones.

While Glover and Best left Feedback with an early copy of Tales From Space, no one likes to launch an interstellar journey alone. So here’s your chance to hop on the city’s first D.I.Y. U.F.O. Head to the Feedback blog to download the Best of Robot Musick mixtape and post your comments. And stay tuned for more on the Reliable Narrators and Tales From Space. - Cville Weekly

In my Feedback column in today's C-VILLE, I spoke with Linz Prog and Hypothesis, the two dirt-biking, Robo-rhyme-dropping emcees behind local hip-hop act Reliable Narrators.

I enjoyed a short set by the Narrators earlier this year during the "Virginia Got Talent?" competition at the Albemarle County Office Building, which featured the songs "Dirt Bike" (listen below) and "Wildn Out." Hypothesis was kind enough to get in touch with me recently and point me in the direction of the Narrators' free mixtape, The Best of Robot Musick. You can download the mixtape in its entirety, large and free of charge, here.

The pair is currently putting the finishing touches on a LP titled Tales From Space; this mixtape is your best introduction to the pair until the album drops. Leave your thoughts below.

Download Reliable Narrators' The Best of Robot Musick here.

Sidenote: For those of you who don't watch the X Games on ESPN, "Dirt Bike" suggests Reliable Narrators are real authorities of that particular sport; they reference everything from the Metal Militia bike crew to moves like the Superman and switch-footed can-cans.

- Cville Feedback Blog