Pitchfork

When we saw chief Mountain Goat John Darnielle rapping along to Aesop Rock's lyrics at the Def Jux MC's Pitchfork Music Festival set, we were rather pleased. However, we were still a little surprised to find out that Darnielle will appear on Aesop's new album, which the rapper described as having "a more diverse sound throughout the record than anything I've done" and lyrically is "all stories in one way or another," in a recent update on his MySpace blog. He has titled the album None Shall Pass and says it is scheduled for a release on Def Jux "sometime in the first half of 07."

None Shall Pass will feature production from Blockhead (seven tracks), Aesop himself (five tracks), El-P, and Rob Sonic (one track apiece). DJ Big Wiz adds "scratches and turntable trickery" to every song "(some a lot some a little, but every one)," and "other voices you will hear on the record in one form or another and some more than once (be it in verse, talking, singing, yodeling, ad-libbing, chorus-ing, etc.) include: El-P, Cage, Camutao, Breeze Brewin, Rob Sonic, John Darnielle."

One of these things is not like the other / One of these things just doesn't belong...

Aesop added, "Most of [the album] is recorded, though a few [tracks] are still a bit in 'demo' form and need some fine tuning and re-kicking. All of this is with the exception of this me-and-El joint, which I'm currently writing. I had to wait 'til he was done with his [album]. I ghost wrote all his shit for it. No I'm kidding. I didn't do that. Combine all that with whatever last minute song(s) I write that I deem a necessity for the record (which usually somehow happens starting the day after you should have stopped working)... Mixing in Jan. or Feb. probably."

Speaking of El-P, Aesop had nothing but positive things to say about the label head's forthcoming I'll Sleep When You're Dead, on which he appears and to which, come to think of it, Cat Power also contributed. I guess Def Jux rappers just have soft spots for top shelf acoustic-guitar-toting indie songwriters.

And finally, speaking almost literally of nothing at all, Aesop added this short piece of non-news to the end of his blog update: "I have this other project that I got asked to do that will actually be dropping before this record. I have to put my name on this piece of paper before I can say it, but it's definitely happening and it'll prob. be out in/around January. It's hard to describe what it is without saying it, and I'm not really allowed to say it yet. It's not really an album but it kind of is. How's that?" Pretty vague, actually.