Anthony “Ant” Davis is a distinguished hip-hop producer, one-half of the renowned duo Atmosphere, and a founding member of independent record label  Rhymesayers Entertainment. His decades-long career of beat-making has also included works for MF DOOM, Brother Ali, Murs, Rav, Sage Francis and a dozen others. Raised in a military family, his nomadic upbringing exposed him to many diverse influences and, coupled with his father’s love for collecting records, laid the groundwork for his deep appreciation for all sorts of music. Ant’s latest endeavor, Collection of Sounds, is a four-volume series of instrumental works showcasing the breadth and depth of his musical expertise.

The Collection of Sounds series offers a window into Ant's creative journey, reflecting his evolution as an artist over the years. Drawing from a vast vault of unreleased material, he’s exhumed cross sections of his catalog with surgical precision,  organizing songs by sound rather than mere chronology. Volume 1 is at times so intimate as to border on claustrophobia, like the creeping “Bar One,” or the haunted twinkling of “I Was Always a Collector,” while other tracks are expansive enough to fill entire venues, like the forebodingly airy “4-Track Beyond Beat 1996."

Many of the beats on Collection of Sounds: Volume 1 have pockets that are practically begging for rappers to explore. When he first pondered releasing an instrumental series, Ant figured he might want to make the songs more intricate than the ones he gave to his rapper collaborators, filling up the space in the mix that would normally be given over to their vocals. “But then it would be jazz, right?” he says with a loud laugh. “And I’m not that.” Fitting, as Collection of Sounds is not about forgetting who you are—it’s about remembering, reconfiguring, and  reimagining, all at once; a testament to Ant's artistic integrity.