That Thavius Beck – he has a right mouth on him, always cussin’ and the like. And just how does he manage to squeeze all those words into such a small window of time? It’s like he’s working at 405 RPM – 405 revelations per minute. In fact there are likely to be broadband speeds in Japan unable to cope with this level of speed and bandwidth. In fact you need fibre optic ears to even begin to appreciate the droning, buzzing signal rate of tracks like ‘Hardcrore’ and the sweet cyber overtures of ‘IDC’. This isn’t rap exactly. This isn’t Hip Hop exactly. It’s not anything exactly. Beck sees a musical boundary, bends it, flexes it, stamps on it, smashes it, smelts it down to within an inch of its ore and then trangresses it. Rules are there to be broken, patience is there to be stretched and cultural attitudes are there to be challenged. So cue up a touch of drum n bass, lashings of raw techtronica and more warp drive than you can throw at an alien ‘wessel’. Beck’s vocals may struggle to rise above the general whirr of some very central beats but it’s exactly the kind of feeling you get in the city. You can look at it two ways: the noise of the traffic either drowns you out entirely or forces you to think that bit louder. And this is a similar experience: penetrating highs and lows you could almost moisturize with.
Food for the faithful.