tes - times two
more strange hip-hop from the warp backed lex label.
this is a very different sounding album. consisting of the usual leftfield loops and instrumental additions this has an overall atmosphere of spookiness that is not that common.
opening with just a minimal old school beatbox loop and deep bassline things then pick up with 'say when' produced by dj ese according to the complex mathematically annotated cover artwork. dj ese has looped an old picked acoustic guitar part and added several layers of vocals making the whole very cool. connections with buck65 are noticeable, but tes's voice is a very different style - tes has a laidback nasal tone that at first can be offputting but once the lp has been spun a few times then this sits well in the sonics (and i aint going to mention another high profile white nasal toned rapper). next up is the lp highlight 'new new york' big orchestral horns/strings sample has been found and used extensively to create a posible crossover track .. if tes shakes his rump then tes could become the beyonce for the underground. a stunning track.
the impressive weird cut up bassnotes/thin beats and appearance of lodek on the darkly sinister 'late to work' would give fans of radio sanctioned hiphop some serious nightmares, the spookness is followed by a short little interlude of scratchy soundtrack style ambience adding to the overall feel of the album. next, we are dropped into 'fooltime' which has some fine intentions with its original loops (deep male vocal choral type of thing) but i found my concentration beginning to wonder, and i didn't feel compelled to get back into the grooves, in fact the tracks following ('big shots' and 'change') i had to resist hitting the 'next' button as these tracks just became wearisome. the thin beats and the fast wordplay just didn't connect with me in the same way that i found myself feeling the recent jehst album which has a similar style in wordplay. "more of the same" feeling settles in, which is a shame ... not that the rest of the lp is bad (though 'trigga da whistla' is annoying and tiresome) just that there is little of the sonic variety that a hiphop albums needs to keep you online till the end. interesting stuff nonetheless, and i look forard to hearing where tes goes after this.
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