|
|
|
|
The
Herbaliser
Very Mercenary
Ninja Tune / PIAS |
|
| "It's been hard work getting VERY
MERCENARY together..." sighs Jake in his credits. It'll be
hard taking it apart and well worth the time from the sounds of it. After the first
listening, there is no mistaking the Herbaliser's sound and production.
They have increased the number of "feat.", diversified the
styles and delved deeper into their record collections and film archives, and still the
final product remains true to their identity and ethic, cristallized in Blow Your
Headphones, three years ago. Whilst What
What is still there, taking us on yet another mad-capped Mission
Impossible with lots of Secret Service Niggers wid very very big guns...
the hard samples of Who's the Realest ?, scratched West Coast attitude,
hails a re-energized Herbaliser, a tougher unit ready to push the stakes
higher, modern hard-nosed urban terrorists, the fifth column moving into action.
Welcome to the Hall of Fame of the greatest
Mercenaries of our time. |
"...You'll never see eye to eye
with the likes of us 'cause we're too damn technical"
|
The Hip-hop portfolio is overloaded with stimulating
features - Mind in the Frame [feat. Blade], Road
of Many Signs [feat. The Dream Warriors], Starlight
[feat. Roots Manuva], When I Shine, [feat. Bahamadia].
Roots Manuva, Ninja Tune crew, offers his cool Caribbean swagger in early
reggae tones, whereas Bahamadia expounds in the intense tongue-tripping,
fluid-lipping New York-style tawlk. Bass-heavy seventies' funk groove meets
happy-go-lucky reggae.
The Dream Warriors and Blade introduce lyrics of an
exceptionally human and humain character, a psychological consciousness which goes further
than the rapper's persona, and, together, establish a coherence in an album that could so
easily become a facile compilation of different schools of Rap styles. |
The Herbaliser is teaching the faith
and faith needs history. With Wall Crawling Giant Insect Breaks, they
have put Hip-hop's origins through the More Beats and Pieces' treatment [Coldcut
- Let Us Play], history and culture pared and sliced up for your pleasure
- the final sound-bite "All material is copy-right"
fading to a sniggering audience, the true Ninja Tune Ethic.
Elsewhere, samples abound which point towards forgotten eras, Soul and
seventies' Funk that could almost be New Jack, voices
from the past and beats of pioneering simplicity often overlooked in the complexity of the
modern studio. And we must not forget the old-skool scratching styles of DJ Ollie
Teeba, the hands-on live interaction between DJ and MC
at the very heart of the Hip-hop performance, and the catharsis of Let it go [feat.
What What]. Let it go, let it flow... |
"In the 1970's, New York
Graffiti, Rapping and Breaking became the prime expressions of a new young people's
subculture call Hip-hop.
Graffiti is the written word.
There's the spoken word of Rap music. And then there's the acrobatic body language
of dances such as Breaking."
(Wall Crawling Giant Insect Breaks) |
Keep your eyes open,
keep your mind in the frame.
(Read between the lines)
|
Very Mercenary doesn't mince its
Rap, but nor does it neglect the instrumental vision of the Herbaliser. The
Sensual Woman, a smoutching blues with a purring flute, sets the tone for a James
Bond-style the Missing Suitcase which brings together brass and woodwind,
bongos, xylophone trickles and organ licks, the fine work by the Easy
Access Orchestra, for an exciting instrumental. In contrast, Moon
Sequance marries simplicity and unity, straight beats and moon-walk snippets,
turning in a loop until we are out of oxygen. The violin glissandos of Shattered
Soul bring us back to the Very Mercenary theme, bridging the gap between the
heavy, slow groove of Portishead and their early obsession with spy
movies and the pumped-up intensity of Propellerhead's On Her
Majesty's Service, Trip-hop and Big Beat finding common ground at the hands of
the Herbaliser and the world of the clandestine. |
But keep your eyes open and
don't misjudge the title.
Very Mercenary isn't about being hardcore, sample-stealing or raising
middle fingers at the establishment. It's about the real mercenary attitude, doing what
you want, when you want. It's about dispensing with the lip-service and brown-nosing that
has come to be synonymous with success in the world of music, and just doing your thing
regardless.
The Herbaliser haven't changed, they've just journeyed deeper into their
musical world and continue to develop their ideas in a way that only they know how. Their
album is of the highest quality and marks another milestone in the history of Ninja
Tune.The only drawback is that
we may have to wait a while for their next offering of mercenary madness.
But you know perfectly well that the best things come to those who wait. |
ML |
|
|
