| Los Angeles-based electronic producer Andre Afram Asmar first made his mark with the release of his debut Zombeats, which introduced his striking hybrid of dub, world music and hip-hop. Working out of his LA recording compound nicknamed The Shroud Asmar continued to explore collaborations with a wide range of instrumentalists and singers on his 2003 follow-up album Race to the Bottom, and has also worked with dub studio pioneer Scientist. This latest album Gawd Bless the Faceless Cowards sees Asmar teaming with LA underground emcee (and head of the respected hip-hop supergroup, the Shapeshifters) Circus and even a cursory glance at the fantastic Dubya/V sleeve art confirms that these guys have alien invasion on the brain and the Bush administration firmly locked in their sights. Opening track "Bully" opens with an expansive soundclash of dub-inflected rumble and a sample ripped from a B-movie talking about human mind control, before Asmar's elongated ragga-tinged syllables ring out around Circus' lazily intertwining rhymes: "A lot of rumours about weapons of mass destruction / But it seems like you're the only one in possession of any / So who's the real bully?" "Army of Fresh" crunches along on slow-motion yet plate-steel heavy beats, with Circus detailing exactly just how he'll build his perfect army of emcees to take out all the haters, before this identikit army ends up turning on him in the last few verses, while "We Are Not Alone" is one of the highlights of this disc, cutting-and-pasting some hilarious hillbilly alien abduction testimonies over Theremin howls, a bouncing slo-mo dancehall-tinged bassline and Circus' Planet of the Apes obsessed plea for alien pride; "Why do we call them aliens / What a derogatory term to name them / Aliens are people too." "Sex in Space" shifts from a rather blatant Homer Simpson sample into slamming hip-hop snares and a bleeping electro synthline, with Circus staying firmly in Area 51 conspiratorial mode ("Flyin' around in the atmosphere / With their ultimate spaceships / Filled with top secret inventions"), while "Nobody Special" positively seethes over its loping dub-infected slow hip-hop backing, with Circus' paranoid spiteful lyric ("What am I doing? / Oh, nothing I'm just writing your will") slowly descending down a long, dark beat-driven tunnel as it draws to its apocalyptic echo-laden conclusion. "Biblical Proof of UFOs" (by now, you've spotted the theme here) recasts the immaculate conception as an act of date rape from outer space ("Imagine Joseph throwing a chair at God on Jerry Springer") around contorted scattering beats, while also finding room to detail just how aliens apparently sit behind the scenes where all human events are concerned, before "Holy Blood" shows Circus struggling to figure out "who's the biggest jerk - Saddam Hussein or George Bush?" around a lyrical flow that targets religious zeal as a thin veil for human interest ("Dear God / please save us from your followers."). "Who Killed Me?" actually lifts samples from the climactic battle scene from the end of Schwarzenegger's Commando (perhaps a veiled giggle at the Governor?) and places them over a vividly undulating backing of Middle Eastern percussion and instrumentation, with Circus' paranoid skewing flow detailing just how his record company is taking a hit out on him just so they sell more records in some post Biggie Smalls meets Freemason conspiracy surreal collision, while layers of percussion and what sounds like a twinkling music box tumble past. "Smell the Roses" meanwhile opens with plucked Middle Eastern instrumentation, before Circus' tense staccato syllables punch in over a whirling tense backdrop of noise and bleeping synths ("The president is just a game show host for some other Wizard of Oz monster), the theme of increased security and surveillance of civilians in America being likened vividly to a Taliban-style crackdown on basic civil rights. Gawd Bless the Faceless Cowards is a stunning album that shows Asmar's distinctively individual hybrid of dub, world-beats and hip-hop combining perfectly around Circus' space-obsessed conspiracy theories, righteous anger against Republican hypocrisy and cut-up and paste B-movie / Our Mysterious World sampling approach, to create a compelling listening experience that matches anger with eloquence. While there's a steady dose of not-too-serious aliencentric humour percolating throughout many of these tracks in a kind of Daisy Age meets Kool Keith kinda way, Gawd Bless... definitely doesn't shy away from confronting the starker realities of the war on terror, even stepping inside the head of a fanatical suicide bomber during "Smell The Roses." While this sort of lyrical exercise could have gone awkwardly wrong in the hands of many others, Asmar and Circus have succeeded in crafting a masterful album that could only have been created by those living under Dubya's America right now. Highly recommended. - In the Mix |
2XLP/Out Of Print