May 6, 2009

Two Fingers drops seven shades of gangsta

Hip hop experimentalist Two Fingers has "dropped" a "phat" one.

As I explained in this post in January, Two Fingers is blunted beat bossman Amon Tobin and fellow Brazilian beat-botherer Doubleclick. Their debut album, also called Two Fingers, hit the "streets" in April.

And it's a right cracking listen. Er... I mean... it's a "sick" record.

The presence of MC Sway (pictured above with Doubleclick and Tobin) and grimesters like Durrty Goodz leads you to think this could be a two dimensional hip hop offering. In the hands of the Tobin, however, that was never going to happen.

Instead, among the lightning rhymes, the Two Fingers album is a glistening techno monster that tunnels to the scuzzy depths of synth buggery (on Keman Rhythm and Bad Girl, for example) and claws its way to the hilly heights of progressive big beat (on That Girl) and ketamine-drenched Timbalandia* (on Not Perfect).

It feels like we've got back the Amon Tobin of old, apart from two inescapable factoids.

Factoid A: Amon never went away. Factoid B: it's not old Tobin at all. Thanks to Doubleclick, this album is truly modern, gloriously harsh and beautifully experimental. Or, in the dialect of the "hood", it's somewhat "brap", seven shades of "gangsta" and it most certainly has got "da goods".

Innit.

* noun. In the style of producer Timbaland.

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