| Los Angelino Awol One has been making bleeding-edge hip-hop music for some time now, flying solo and into outer space as a part of the always bizarre Shapeshifters crew. His voice, often described as one of the most recognizable in "the underground," rasps near the breaking point, though it's more Tom Waits than Tricky; a broken loom on which he weaves his particular breed of vocal tapestry, a hip-hop of non-sequiturs where each line is clearly unsure of what will follow next. This style has led to reviewers labeling Awolrus' music as "nonchalant," "impulsive," and "inconsistent," questioning his ability to stay on-topic, or really whether he even has a topic at all. In 2001 Awol teamed up with producer Daddy Kev to turn out his most complete album up to that point, Souldoubt, a straight-forward hip-hop opus that ran the gamut from the jiggy "Rhythm" ("People just want to have fun and all you suckas are so fucking temporary") to the grotesque "Solitude" ("Watch me cut my tongue out of my mouth"). Ironically, Slanguage, the Mush records-sponsored reunion of Awolrus and Daddy Kev, is a dramatic departure from that sound. In fact, its complexity and cohesiveness easily outstrips any of the previous albums on which Awol has appeared - this is an album that has more in common with Doseone and Boom Bip's Circle or Sixtoo's Duration than it does with other Awol releases. The soundscape borrows liberally from free jazz, all upright bass notes, pianos, horns, and schizo drums, with D-Styles scratching to round it out. And for once, finally, within that context of free jazz, Awol's sequenceless steam-of-consciousness makes perfect sense. He blurts asides and interjections, makes running commentary about the beats, converses with the vocal samples, playing his mind and voice as musicians shout chords and notes into the cacophony. These scriptless moments flow through and between the more premeditated tracks, where Awol shows his vocal range, singing one moment, whispering in his thoughtfully raspy tone the next. Yet throughout, the impulsiveness that seemed out of place on other albums sounds in careful harmony with the music here, with the most random of lines making sense in the overall picture. Leave it to Mush to give artists room to explore uncharted territory in a way that works wonders. Slanguage is a knockout punch. Kudos. - Dusted |
2XLP/Out Of Print