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PRESS
"Reachin’ is at once vintage and futuristic, a vision for a new utopia influenced by the past, daring to imagine insulated black communities as separate from Earth—unified, Afrocentric, and untarnished by subjugation. It’s a world within a world, complete with its own language and monuments and dogma—comparing New York to a museum, its graffiti as much high art as the work of Dadaist Salvador Dalí. Digable Planets make their own pre-internet information exchange, where traveling a few blocks could mean an introduction to a completely new milieu, where little ever gets lost in translation, where the inspiration for ideas occurs as spontaneously as a trumpet solo."
- Sheldon Pierce, Pitchfork 2/23/2018
"The group’s debut album, 1993’s Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space), is very good, but all the promise of the project was realized with its follow-up. Blowout Comb is an album of forces pulling in different directions, exerting tension and stretching into new forms. On a purely sonic level, the music, produced by the group, is beautiful and goes down so easily it’s almost disconcerting. The mixture of soul and jazz samples and live instrumentation paints an eminently listenable late-night atmosphere: there are clouds of vibraphone, drum loops firmly in the pocket, creaky Fender Rhodes lines, tasteful horn accents, all of it anchored by warm, snug, and instantly memorable basslines. The general sonic approach became more prominent as the 90s wore on, as these kinds of crate-digging, rare-groove types continued to mine old soul and jazz records for samples, eventually transforming into a kind of supper-club trip-hop... But Digable made the approach feel completely organic and integrated with their broader musical goal of expanding rap’s reach and deepening its connection to music history."
-Mark Richardson, Pitchfork 6/25/2013
"It was hard to tell who was having more fun: the band or the audience. Once people got out of their seats in the introduction, they never sat back down. Masses ended up running to the front pit to dance to their favorite cut. As Butler announced that they’d have to wrap it up to keep within curfew, there was audible frustration and disappointment. This was the night people had been holding out for, and it exceeded every expectation. Then the walking bass line to the band’s hit “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” kicked in, and it was all smiles and head bobs."
-Dusty Henry, Consequence Of Sound 1/2/2016
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