| I could listen to the first track of this CD ten times a day and not get bored with it. A loop of a four note piano ditty interspersed with staplers, scissors, shakers and other simple tools makes up the core beats of the verses. The chorus, a slowed down sample of acoustic guitar and a singer asking, "Baby, how'd we ever get this way?" with layers of samples, record scratches, and beeping noises. I can't talk about the lyrics yet, but by the end of the song there's a sample of a man saying "take your hands out of your pants / You really don't have that need" followed by a younger voice saying "I'm not shaking your hand brother!" followed by a truncated version of the "Baby, how'd we ever get this way?" sample which (according to the lyric sheets) goes like this: "Eee eee eee eee eee eee EEE EEE EEE! ee e eee e eee eee EE EEE EE! Ih e eee eee e e e eee eee EEE EEE EEH! E e ih e e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-eeew." Okay, I'll back-track a bit here. Curse ov Dialect is some kind of radical experimental, primordialist propaganda. Self labeled "Australian Made Post-Hop." Their names appear to be: August the 2nd, Atarungi, Vulk Makedonski, Raceless, and Paso Bionic. The music is all mixed up samples ranging from reggae to hip-hop to jazz to middle ages folk music, from didgeridoo to Muslim chanting. It's everything all over the fucking place. I really don't know how to describe what this ends up sounding like, but it's a well-organized mess that comes out in an amazingly smooth flow. The vocals are mostly in heavy Aussie accents (and sometimes a wide variety of other languages) with speech impediments. It's rap but not with a straightforward rap flow, it speeds up and slows down unexpectedly, but not randomly. Everything is complicated but so precisely timed and mixed that it fits together and makes immediate sense. The lyrics are anthropological. They rap, talk, (lecture?) about extinct races, spiritual balance with nature, and imperialism. Is this the height of hunter-gatherer, leaver culture, Daniel Quinnite, luddite extremism, with the high-tech hypocrisy of a mixed and manufactured soundtrack? Or is this perhaps the sound of a post-globalized deeply multi-cultural world? Can we look backward so far that we see forward? All the lyrics are printed over pictures of little girls and sparrow silhouettes, complete with noises and identification of who is rapping where, so you can decide for yourself. - Action |
2XLP/Out Of Print