Tag: Tree City

Out of the Blue — Ann Arbor Hip-Hop Group Tree City Makes a Surprise Return With “Pure Levels” Album

Tree City’s Kyle “Silas Green” Hunter, Jacoby “DJ Cataclysmic” Simmons, and Evan “Clavius Crates” Haywood in 2013. Photo by Cy Abdelnour

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on the Ann Arbor District Library’s Pulp blog.

A mature tree blooms every year. Fruit trees can take two to five years to produce. It took Tree City 13 years for Pure Levels to flower.

The Ann Arbor hip-hop group spent that time shaping and defining the album’s tracks before releasing it late last year.

“It’s a time capsule, and it’s a good chunk of our personal evolution as artists and as a group,” said Evan “Clavius Crates” Haywood, a Tree City MC and producer, about the group’s first collection of new songs since 2010’s Thus Far.

“It’s exciting that it’s finally at the point where we’re happy with it and we felt like it was ready. We did not want to release it when it was just good enough. We wanted to release it when we felt it was something really timeless, something that would hold up to repeated listens, and something that would hold people’s interest.”

Pure Levels features Tree City’s four MCs—Clavius Crates, Silas Green, DJ Cataclysmic, and Cheeks—rapping candid rhymes about broken relationships, aging family members, systemic issues, and capitalism alongside fantastical space-themed wordplay over sci-fi-sounding beats by producer Michael Dykehouse and several others.

“Over the years, I feel like we’ve always believed in ourselves as rappers, but working on these songs, we came to the realization that we’re good at what we do,” said Jacoby Simmons, who performs as DJ Cataclysmic. “And who doesn’t want to feel the feeling of accomplishment when you work on something for a long time, and you garner that success?”

And with that success comes a 15-track album that explores living life in another dimension while facing real-world challenges and everyday struggles.

“The theme of the album is—on one level—about space, and it has these space travel themes,” said Kyle Hunter, who performs as Silas Green, and is now based in Houston. “But on the other side of it, space represents growth and expansion and challenging yourself.”

To learn more, I spoke with Tree City’s MCs about the inspiration behind the album.

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The Archivist’s Tale – Evan Haywood Digs Through His Past to Help Define His Musical Future on New Live Album

evan-haywood
Evan Haywood features a compelling juxtaposition of sound and genre on his latest live album, “Canterbury Tales.” Photo – Doug Coombe

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on the Ann Arbor District Library’s Pulp blog.

Evan Haywood remembers his first live solo show at Canterbury House in 2014.

The producer, musician, songwriter, rapper, visual artist, filmmaker, and digital archivist recalled feeling nervous about sharing vulnerable folk songs and playing a nylon-string guitar at the Ann Arbor venue.

“It was such a jarring experience almost to go from performing in sweaty clubs and bars where everybody’s dancing … and having a good time to this very stark, acoustic performance where I’m baring my soul,” said Haywood, a University of Michigan alumnus who had previously performed live with the local hip-hop group Tree City.

“I feel like that performance was some sort of watershed moment for me because I had to prove to myself that I could do it. I had never done a performance like that with just an acoustic guitar and myself.”

Fortunately, Haywood’s intimate performance was recorded on cassette by Fred Thomas and initially released on limited-edition tape through Thomas’ Life Like label in 2015. Today, part of that performance now appears on Haywood’s latest live album, Canterbury Tales.

“I spent the past 10 years or so honing them and working on the mixes and cleaning up some of the noise and things like that to get them to the point they’re at now,” Haywood said.

“When you’re dealing with tape, you have fewer options, so you really have to work in a detailed way to be able to massage those recordings and get the good stuff out and take some of the noise down. That’s something I’ve been tinkering with—those Canterbury House recordings—and I feel like now my tinkering is done.”

Continue reading “The Archivist’s Tale – Evan Haywood Digs Through His Past to Help Define His Musical Future on New Live Album” →