As promised, let's take a deeper look into Rubberoom's "Gothic Architecture" project from 1995. The 10-track cassette was released in 1995 on Elastic Recordings. The Chicago crew of both eMCees & producers were celebrated (below) in the second issue of "Caught In The Middle" magazine. Caught In The Middle Magazine was the brainchild of Kevin Beacham (Creator/Co-Owner) and J-Bird (Owner/Co-Creator) and was produced out of Chicago in conjunction with graphic designers, Boom Design. J. Bird managed Rubberoom & if you check out the "Street Theme" post, you can read how J. Bird and Kevin Beacham connected Rubberoom & Atmosphere, as well as how they landed positions at RSE. The review says, "If making dope records is no guarantee of successful stage shows, the same is true the other way around. Fortunately, Rubberoom successfully translate their live skills to vinyl with their single (promo only) "Synapse Gap" and EP - Gothic Architecture in stores now. The music lives up to the "Gothic" title, creating an eerie, foreboding atmosphere that other groups have aimed for but didn't reach." It further adds, "Weaving in and out of the beats are dissonant washes of sound from jazz and bugged out modern classical and film noir soundtrack type music. The samples are not the usual breakbeat fare. If I heard them in their original forms, I'd never guess it, but the samples are put to create a straight up Hip-Hop sound." Cont'd below...
Praising Rubberoom's live show, the overall review of the album is equally positive and is summed up by, "It's lovely, chaos, anarchy, music..." "Gotchic Architecture" is now available on Rubberoom's Bandcamp page, where the digital version is now 13 tracks, including bonus instrumentals. If you didn't grow up in the Chicago Hip-Hop scene, you may have missed this release, so I recommend you give it a listen below. As always, hit the archives for more and please do follow their breadcrumbs.