What the hell is going on here? Like a DJ who can’t decide what to play, or someone scanning a CD or radio stations on search of something specific, ‘Brotherhood’ – the first track on ‘Twisted Strangers’ – cuts back and forth hither and thither seemingly at random. But wait, it’s not a cut-up or mash-up in the conventional sense. The backing track slalems wildly and bursts with seemingly random samples, but there’s a structured rap work laid over the top ov it.
The Australian act have been described variously, with their bio calling them purveyors of ‘wildly surrealist experimental hip-hop’. And ‘Twisted Strangers’ is indeed that. The 17 tracks eschew so many of the commonplace tropes ov hip-hop, in particular overt structure or repetition, in favour ov something far more fluid, organic.
The title track features Hemlock Ernst (Samuel T. Herring from Future Islands), and transitions between smooth soulful rap and pseudo-medieval harpsichord via scratchy, angular guitar-driven passages and some dubby reggae and string-soaked dramatics – all in the space ov four minutes.
Not all ov the tracks are completely crazy or off-the-wall, but most are, leaping maniacally from style to style, woozy beats being the least headspinning ov the effects as they flip from grimy ragga to quirky stoner rap with nods to House of Pain and Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy along the way. Lyrically, too, they’re impossible to pin down or pigeonhole, as they skip from serious socio-political rants to flippant abstraction in the drop ov a beat.
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The sounds and the samples are as eclectic as you could possibly imagine, and at times it’s a dizzying overload, and the stuttering ‘Wood Panel’ sounds like a skipping record – maybe it actually is. Drawing on myriad cultural elements in the shaping of the music, ranging from Japanese motifs to Punjabi influences with Latina licks, ‘Twisted Strangers’ is both strange and twisted, a veritable sonic melting pot.
It’s a long and wide-ranging album which is a shade hit and miss in places, but it is bold and spectacularly imaginative.
Curse ov Dialect Online
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