Paul Bass Photo
Sketch Tha Cataclysm at WNHH FM.
Armando Acevedo clicked on a file from his phone. He unrolled a taped-together 10-page scroll. He started rapping the printed lyrics, summoning the insights of a noted 20th century Swiss psychologist married to 21st century beats.
Sketch Tha Cataclysm performing on WNHH "Acoustic Thursday."
Acevedo — aka local rapper Sketch the Cataclysm — was performing “Put It All Against Everything Today” as the second of three numbers on WNHH FM’s “Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51.”
It was only the second time he has performed the song. He has worked on it for six months, since his friend Mandy Moorehol sent him four tracks to work with.
“This is going to be one song,” Cataclysm recalled deciding.
He began with a writing prompt: Piaget. The word just popped up.
Back in college, Cataclysm had encountered the work of the late Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Now he returned to his work, specifically his theory about the four stages of cognitive development that children go through on the road to becoming adults.
From atmospheric horns, the beats themselves seemed to track those stages: “Scattered, playful, not locked into a beat” at first. Then “they start taking steps; it’s more rigid in style.” Followed by “breaking out into my own thing,” eventually “venturing off to actually be a person.”
Guided by the beats, Cataclysm stitched the four verses to a chorus throughout the six-minute, 54-second song:
Put it all ‘gainst everything today
Put it all ‘gainst everything today
Put it all ‘gainst everything today
Put it all ‘gainst everything today
Witness this birth/berth taking steps in the fray
Then gripping constant and ego at play …
On top of their literal meaning, the words added their own beat in Cataclysm’s delivery, pivoting from pauses and steady, measured recitation to rapid-fire bursts of riffing and internal rhyming. “You have to think about your words like a drummer, the tone that you’re using as well as the notes that you’re playing,” he said.
Acevedo, who’s 42, has been developing his own musical approach since, growing up in Waterbury, he began using the karaoke function to his brother’s boom box to rap along with LL Cool J. By the age of 14, he was performing on a public access TV show. He has been performing in New Haven and recording tracks since 2003, as the Sketch Tha Cataclysm solo act and as half of an “underground hip-hop” duo called 50x50s.
Both acts have new releases coming soon from Fake Four Records. You can catch them performing live next at Cafe9 as part of a four-act hip-hop bill on Tuesday, July 18. Meanwhile, you can check out Sketch Tha Cataclysm’s full performance on WNHH’s “Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51” in the video above in this article.
If you, too, are a local musician interested in performing live on WNHH FM, click on the “E‑mail the Author” button at the top of this story to learn more.
Previous “Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51” performances:
• Ceschi
• MJ Bones
• Johnathan Moore
• Charlie Widmer
• Sam Carlson
Sketch Tha Cataclysm’s “Acoustic Thursday” set list:
Seasons Through Pen’s Ascension (0:30)
Put It All Against Everything Today (11:24)
The Sound (26:14)