For their four-track Audiobook EP, San Francisco's Jealous Guys linked up exclusively with producer Jeremy "Zodiac" Rose (The Weeknd's "What You Need"). Rose's production keeps up the synth-gloomy Toronto sound of late, with some twists. Standout track "Walkin Around" opens with a long stretch of Billy Corgan covering the Otis Redding-penned Bee Gees song "To Love Somebody," but halfway through flips into something like a future dance-aware Cannibal Ox beat. Jealous Guys' Ayinde and BizYCasa sound smarter and more paranoid with every release and they shine across Audiobook. Both have a knack for turn-of-the-century underground rap tropes (god, aliens and urban decay), captured in cynical lines like, I walked down the alley, seen Virgin Mary pee/ Took the DNA, tried to make another we. Plus: rad cover art by Vanguard Bots, which modifies Bosch's 15th century painting The Garden of Earthly Delights with floating pyramids, Adam and Eve turned black and Jesus decapitated.
