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MH-228 Circus Vs. Andre Afram Asmar - Gawd Bless The Faceless Cowards  Gawd Bless The Faceless Cowards counters the left of left-field raps of Circus (head honcho of the Shapeshifters) with Andre Afram Asmar’s elaborate, dub inflected world-beats. The results collage the socially relevant tones and playfulness of daisy-age hip-hop with the otherworldly word and sound barrage of space-rap. Asmar’s bed of glitchy, expertly processed rhythms pulse and flow as Circus' stream of consciousness lyrics dissect religious dogma, political power struggles, alien abductions, reptilian invaders, doomed relationships, and sucker MCs. A true collaboration, both artists veer slightly from their established forms to produce this strange and often hilarious joyride. |
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| Reviews Summary |
| This is an ambitious, highly intelligent record - Metro.Pop / Highly recommended - In the Mix / Very Compelling - Impact Press / Better than any other anti-Bush record this year - CMJ / Circus's most accessible release to date - Exclaim! / A mind-bending lyrical and musical journey - Tucson Citizen |
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| Somewhere between rap and political spoken-word, but mostly in the world of the insight-injected, spacey, alienated soundscape, this album is not like a whole lot of hip-hop you'll hear this year. LA based Andre Afram Asmar creates the tracks, equally inspired by dub (he has worked with Scientist), B-movie soundtracks, (one might assume) an alien abduction, and sinister ambient downtempo. Beats are merely part of a foggy brew that stuffs exotic instrumentation, funk and electro riffs with distant and quasi-frightening synthesizer strains amid funny and strange vocal samples. Circus' lyrics are a whole other matter, and "Holy Blood" might be the most complicated reading of Bush vs. Hussein hip-hop currently has to offer. Circus (a well known member of the Shapeshifters) lazily stomps through these tracks, his flow steadily rolling along with the hazy textures of the music behind him. Incorporating a neat metaphor between the foreign and the alien, this is an ambitious, highly intelligent record. - Metro.Pop |
2XLP/Out Of Print