| In the wake of electroclash's commercial breakthrough, it might not come as any real surprise to you to learn that Octavius (born William Marshall) takes the majority of his cues from bands of the Reagan era. But rather than trot out the usual suspects (Duran Duran, New Order), Octavius' oeuvre subsides on a healthy diet of Romeo Void, Soft Cell and the Sisters of Mercy. Not your average trio of influences, but then again, Octavius isn't your average electronic performer. Stocked floor-to-ceiling with bleeding-heart synth pop that's too obliquely romantic for its own good, yet remains too sublimely inviting to ignore, Audio Noir is an album that challenges hip-hop convention by playing the sentimentality card to the hilt. The warmth and richness of compositions like "Cellophane" and "Before You Go Away" is reminiscent of contemporaries like Air or M83, while the collapsed-lung shudder of "Monochrome" is pure Aphexian delight, and the paranoid shuffle of "Vacant/Panic" coughs and wheezes like vintage Tricky, spliff smoke spewing as it staggers along. Audio Noir isn't exactly traditional, even by hip-hop standards, and though Marshall's hip-hop pedigree is more Bristolian than Comptonian, the fractured lens through which he refracts often resembles the crack-addled visage of the Gza, or the diamond-studded eye the Rza fixed upon Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog. It's hip-hop as imagined by Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra, or electronica as envisioned by 18th-century French philosophers, but any way you slice it, Audio Noir is a subject well worth delving into. - Grooves |
2XLP/Out Of Print