Rating:
Genre:
Electronica
Release Date: 03/25/1997
Run Time: 67:13
On its second album, the
Rockers Hi-Fi crew continues its musical exploration of the dark borderlands that separate
hip-hop,
trip-hop,
reggae,
dub, and
electronica. With its sometimes nebulous chord changes, casual rhythms, and murky textures, this is music that is constantly in danger of bogging down, and it sometimes does -- good luck getting all the way through the skull-numbing
"Mish Mash Episode 2" (even at a mercifully brief two minutes) or the very aptly titled
"Going Under." But when the energy picks up just a little and the groove kicks in just right, the results are quietly spectacular:
"One With Another" combines samples from a sermon with faint and eerie synthesizer washes and an intermittently complex
house beat;
"Uneasy Skanking" is exactly what it says it is, a dead-slow one-drop
reggae groove overlaid on a faintly queasy chord progression;
"Fling Mi Ting" makes offhand reference to
jungle while focusing your attention on a loose,
dubwise funk groove. The album's real highlights are the singing and
rapping interludes provided by
Phoebe Esprit, whose
"Now I Deliver" is an exquisite fusion of
reggae and
hip-hop, and who puts her own personal stamp on
the Clash's
"Ghetto Defendant" with
"Queen of the Ghetto." Highly recommended.
~Rick Anderson, All Music Guide
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