| Those of you that are admirers of the melancholy instrumental hip-hop of Dj Shadow, RJD2 and Four Tet should stop reading right now, head over to your local independent record shop, and grab a copy of Villain Accelerate's Maid of Gold. The decision to add this exceptional record to your collection should be a no-brainer, because these guys (Sixtoo and Stigg of the Dump) do Shadow better than Shadow does himself these days. An epic, elegiac journey through hip-hop's heart of darkness, Maid of Gold is probably the finest record of its kind to come pulsing through this reviewer's speakers in ages. At once oppressively urban and dreamily bucolic (Sixtoo's time spent in Montreal may have something to do with this), Maid of Gold plays as evidence of what would happen if Boards of Canada spent a day crate-digging in the inner-city and returned to the Scottish countryside to collage sounds together with a load of vinyl and two decks rather than a battery of vintage synths. It's almost impossible for me to intellectualize this record and break it down into genres and influences and high points and low points and all the other elements required in a proper record review. It's a moving, haunting album, and it haunts and moves in ways that can't quite be put into words. For instance, at the exact halfway point, on a track entitled "Revisit," the beat drops out to isolate a wintry, faraway chord progression worthy of Ambient Works-era Aphex Twin, a progression so plaintive that it almost brought me to tears. It is moments like these that remind me why I listen to music: raw emotion. Elsewhere, dull, poignant piano and Rhodes serve as beds for gritty, constantly evolving beatscapes. Horns rumble, choruses' wail, strings swell, all contributing to the mood of a recently unearthed fossil, some long-buried, ancient precursor to modern hip-hop. Although I've relied heavily on the Shadow comparisons, Maid of Gold is far too good to be considered a mere photo-copy. Joshua Davis practically invented this type of music, but, sadly, others are now carrying the torch. Villain Accelerate have moved to the head of the pack. - Ghetto Blaster |
2XLP/Out Of Print