Review Thursday: Ill Bill & DJ Muggs / Minus The Bear
Minus The Bear
Omni
Dangerbird Records
Minus The Bear is one of those bands that people tell me I should listen to, but I never really get around to doing. You know the bands. Your friend says, "Hey, you should listen to this you might like it," and you agree to listen, but you never get around to listening or you listen to one or two song on a Myspace profile and you never quite hear again. I listened to some Minus the Bear stuff and remembered liking it, but truth be told, I couldn't tell you anything about the couple of songs I heard, so when I was asked if I wanted to review their latest album, Onmi, I thought, "Well, I really should. People have been telling me about them for what seems like forever now; it's time to get this done."
This is the band’s fourth album, and having only heard a sparse amount of things from their previous work, I may not be qualified to say if Minus the Bear fans will like Omni. However, this isn’t going to stop me from reviewing this album. Maybe it makes me more qualified to review it since I’m less biased than everyone else. Or it really doesn’t matter at all and I should just get to the review.
I have to say that I really like this album. It’s a pleasant bunch of tunes that are upbeat and ultimately make me happy to listen to. (Now of course, since I am me, that is going to now be qualified by a bunch of different statements to make this sound like I‘m contradicting myself.) However, I do realize that this album has some faults within its happy confines. I can tell you that it doesn’t have nearly as many weird time signature changes that made previous songs that I’ve heard so interesting. This might not mean much though since I haven’t heard many songs, so I’m not going to go in depth into this point. I think the main problem with this album is that ultimately it’s kind of boring. Many of the songs sounds similar and there’s not too much variation. One songs bleeds into another into another. There’s undeniable catchiness to the album, but it’s a catchiness that is repeated over and over again.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that for this album the band played all their songs all the way through rather than piece them together in the studio afterwards like on previous efforts. [1] Maybe it has to do with the fact that they signed to Dangerbird and got a new producer. Maybe they just haven’t taken enough uppers… I don’t know. What I do know is that this album lacks a variety that makes you stand up and take notice, and is also kind of sparse on energy, not making a great album to keep you awake.
But, it’s still a good album. It managed to keep me entertained while I did other things on the computer, and it’s got kind of a, for lack of a better term, "brainless" quality to it, where you can listen and you don’t really have to think too much about it. In addition it really made me feel good in a happy way after listening to it, which most albums don’t really do.
To sum it up, this album is a good album if you want to add some background to your work day, or if you want to relax and listen to something that isn’t going to tax your brain. However, maybe, for everyone’s safety the album should have a warning on it that reads, "Caution: may cause drowsiness. Use caution when operating heavy machinery." Safety first after all.
Comments, critiques, good ideas for preparing steaks: gradeaexplosives@cjlo.com
---
Ill Bill And DJ Muggs
Kill Devil Hills
Uncle Howie Records
The days of the rap albums with a singular vision are largely gone. The album-length collaboration in-between producer and rapper is one of a special nature: the marriage in-between words and music, between meaning and sonic space is one of very careful balance. The phenomenon rarely happens in this age of hit-fuelled, star-producer-requiring outings, trading in artistic value for commercial viability when a rapper teams up with a menagerie of hit producers of the minute. So it's a breath of fresh air to see a project as such Kill Devil Hills come about, with the edgy darkness of the beats created by DJ Muggs, balancing out rapper Ill Bill's politically-tinged bars.
Much like he did for the GZA in 2005 with their collaborative album Grandmasters, DJ Muggs returns to man the boards for almost all tracks (the lone stand-out is an interlude) on Kill Devil Hills, creating a murky sonic atmosphere for which Uncle Howie Records spitter Ill Bill can drop his conspiracy-laced rhymes.
Opener "Cult Assassin" sets the tone: dark synth lines and chopped-up drum sample that sounds like a funeral dirge play over Bill's rhymes, chock full of paranoia and conspiracy theories. He even references the track "Doomsday Was Written In An Alien Bible" from his 2008 record The Hour Of Reprisal as the song ends, adding a linking narrative element to his music.
Many of Bill's frequent collaborators appear on the record: La Coka Nostra bandmates Everlast and Slaine appear on the track "Skull And Guns" (which, coincidentally, is also the image that appears on La Coka Nostra's debut album), and Raekwon guests on one of the album's better songs, "Chase Manhattan", a two-minute bank-robbing tale that gives an apt play-by-play as Rae and Bill trade off. Jedi Mind Tricks mastermind Vinnie Paz as well as Sick Jacken, Sean Price and Cypress Hill member B-Real also make an appearance and add their own flavour to a number of tracks.
Muggs manages to keep the atmosphere heavy with grimy drum samples and a virtual army of nasty-sounding keyboards production that while in theory sound boring, does actually manage to differentiate itself enough from song to song to stay intriguing.
Although KDH is a largely satisfying record, the repetition of lyrical themes grates after a while, and the record, comprised of 13 songs and 3 interludes, is just long enough to get its message out before it overstays its welcome, a problem with other Ill Bill releases. We get that he wants everyone to know about The Illuminati and that society is brainwashed, we just don't need to be beaten over the head with the hamfisted approach Bill takes to writing.
Staff Login | Advertise | Our Location | RSS | Contact Us
