Slurp, slurp! Eat too many mad east London cows and this is what happens. More unmistakably tasty grime from Roll Deep. Bloated cello and bass chase each other in an octave zig zag. Like Mr. Weed’s earlier “Creeper,” but even better. Words haven’t quite caught up with this shit yet! Clearly the crew’s best standalone riddim to date. Best served with MC spit. Moo!
Plasticman Pump Up The Jam
London’s very own P-man goes from strength to strength with this latest 12. From the sublow-slung “3-step tech of Pump…” to the crisp and lively hardcore grime of the flip’s “White Gloves,” Plasticman continues to push the limits of post-garage electro-bashment. Check “White Gloves” in particular for some lovely programming tricks and decoys. Probably post-garage’s most exciting producer, and no, he hadn’t heard of Hawtin.
Aesop Rock Bazooka Tooth
Oh my god, journalists across the globe are officially critiquing my first eight bars! Aesop may call out the critics in the first verse of his third album, Bazooka Tooth, but he needn’t worry as he delivers a stunning follow-up to Labor Days. Fans of his Long Island drawl will celebrate this return to form and addicts of his amazing vocabulary will get to dust off their dictionaries as Aesop contorts words and phrases into a symphony of lyrical anarchy. Aesop made most of his own beats on this record, creating dark and dense soundscapes from the not-so-distant future, perfect for popping in the Walkman as you roam a deserted New York City as the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust. His drums compliment his words perfectly. Aesop’s label boss and frequent collaborator El-P offers production and verbally hijacks the exquisite “We’re Famous,” singling out fake indie rappers: “They been failing for years and calling themselves vets/that’s bold/motherfucker you’re not a vet, you’re just old,” and Mr. Lif joins him for back and forth storytelling on “11:35.” Bazooka Tooth reveals another side of Aesop: darker and denser. Gone are the sweet melodies and sing-a-long choruses of 2001’s “Daylight”-enter the ominous refrain of “Superfluke”: “Please don’t feed the Bazooka Tooth!” Dirty hardcore hip-hop at its finest, done the Def Jux”
DJ Olive Bodega
DJ Olive’s Bodega is the sound of the barrio rewired and recontextualized, a genre-defying mash-up encompassing everything from brash Latin horn solos to twangy spaghetti Western guitar riffs to reverberating dub basslines. Not at all what one would expect from an avant-garde turntablist who’s collaborated with names like Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and free jazz legend John Zorn, but it’s an irresistibly funky and fresh collection of backyard bangers all the same. The end result is blended seamlessly in the style of a block-party-rocking mix disc. Muy sabroso!
Lyrics Born Calling Out
This is how you would set off a neighborhood block party!!! Lyrics’ virtuosity and Joyo’s uplifting b-girl style singing ride nicely atop a fluid bassline. This would’ve got played at Mr. Five’s for sure!!
Pharahoe Monch Agent Orange
A distorted keyboard opens into a loud drum kit that gives Pharaohe the opportunity to voice his displeasure with the current state of our country’s politics. Not for the shook ones…
E-40 Gasoline
Rick Rock’s beat crushes anything in its path. E-40 can just kill it verbally, but peep his genius on the Bay Area’s “grindin” remix. This joint would work in any club situation.
Akrobatik Feat. Mr.Lif Wreck Dem
Opening with a dubbed out descending rattle, this is battle rhyme bravado heaven. As Guru exclaims throughout the song…”watch these fly niggas show you how to rhyme asshole!!!”
Ant Uncontrolled Environment
This far-from-unpleasant EP transports you into strange territories of your imagination. The tracks here range from surreal electronika landscapes to listenable ’50s-sci-fi-style musique concrete to something reminiscent of Martin Denny put through some kind of weirdness filter. Track five sounds a bit like Kraftwerk jamming over the other three tracks, plus a dash of Kodo and random cut-ups that echo the sound. It’s the most accessible track on the EP and certainly one for our DJ playlist.
Schubert Ghost Notes
Is that a scratch on track one or is it intentional? Hard to tell with vinyl, and just as you’re lost in pondering, the beat kicks in, and it sounds good at both 33 1/3rpm and 45rpm. What more can we say? We’ll be DJing with it. The technofied track two uses nice underlying sound effects as an effective way to mutate from one sound to another and into a dirty rhythm that’s reminiscent of “What a Day,” an early Throbbing Gristle beat. On the flip, track three is like Teutonic industrial techno by numbers, while track four features an electro rhythm and bassline over an Orb-like sound-think techno meets fluffy clouds. To us it sounds more interesting than the first track, and would work well as a mashing track.
