Review Of Benga's Upcoming Album - Diary Of An Afro Warrior
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Artist:
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Album:
7/10
The album opens with super smooth melodies and chill tempos. "Zero M2" eases the listener into the cycle as gently as sliding into a warm bath. The light jazz melodies dance playfully with dubbed- out drums while sultry basslines sink deep into weary muscles. The effervescence of "Night" follows with the sonic equivalent of turning on the bubbling jets. Choruses of different instruments take turns telling a story interspersed with long, dramatic pauses. The melodies haunt the listener during these stretches of near silence, swirling and echoing in the mind, drawing the consciousness deeper and deeper into the subconscious, submerging into the world of an Afro Warrior. The track has a way of lingering. "B4 The Dual" then glides in like waves stretching onto a beach. It swells into a Kenny G homage that gets crunked until it resembles an old-school grime riddim, only to run out of breath. It's a weird one on its own, but it might be dangerous with the right MC. I bet it would sound dope with Chipmunk or Nolay spittin' along!"E Trips," track four, is a great name for the song that sounds like the drugs just kicked in. At this point, the album turns on the party mode. Things get darker and weirder, and the subsonics sometimes blur the line between hearing and feeling. "Someone 20" is an electro-house track experiencing acid-techno for the first time. Imagine Kitt from Knight Rider (yes, the car) at its first outdoor rave: red scanner lights bouncing energetically to the beats, computer system searching the stars above for any distant relatives: KARR, Goliath, Soundwave, Nightscream... or just imagine a mash-up of the Knightrider theme song and the Dr. Who theme song (Orbital remix) and you'd almost be hearing "Someone 20.""Light Bulb" and "Crunked Up" are smooth psychedelic journeys of acid-techno and dubtronica. Those distant relatives that Kitt was scanning for in "Someone 20" make a grand entrance on "Go Tell Them," a track dominated by robot voices from outer space. Militant industrial beats suggest a robotic takeover, complete with a King Crimson-inspired hair-metal outro."The Cut" and "Emotions" trance out for a few minutes, providing a perfect soundtrack for stargazing into deep space. "The Cut" invokes a slightly darker sound with creeping drum-n-bass synths. The melodies sometimes get excited, but never out of control. A slow and steady rhythm keeps everything in step. "Emotions" has a touch of Dirty South drum sounds; its energy is slow and conservative like sweltering summer days. "3 Minutes" is very ambient. It seems to tiptoe past as if it doesn't want any attention. "Pleasure" draws on the spaced out acid-electro of "Someone 20" but adds occasional vocal clips on top. "26 Basslines" was clearly made to be a club banger. It doesn't just wobble out of giant sub-woofers, it KRUMPS out! The tempo picks up slightly on this one, but the use of dramatic pauses reins everything back in again. The music gets progressively more mellow from this point out; we are returned to our former reality with the smooth sounds of jazz.
The album opens with super smooth melodies and chill tempos. "Zero M2" eases the listener into the cycle as gently as sliding into a warm bath. The light jazz melodies dance playfully with dubbed- out drums while sultry basslines sink deep into weary muscles. The effervescence of "Night" follows with the sonic equivalent of turning on the bubbling jets. Choruses of different instruments take turns telling a story interspersed with long, dramatic pauses. The melodies haunt the listener during these stretches of near silence, swirling and echoing in the mind, drawing the consciousness deeper and deeper into the subconscious, submerging into the world of an Afro Warrior. The track has a way of lingering. "B4 The Dual" then glides in like waves stretching onto a beach. It swells into a Kenny G homage that gets crunked until it resembles an old-school grime riddim, only to run out of breath. It's a weird one on its own, but it might be dangerous with the right MC. I bet it would sound dope with Chipmunk or Nolay spittin' along!"E Trips," track four, is a great name for the song that sounds like the drugs just kicked in. At this point, the album turns on the party mode. Things get darker and weirder, and the subsonics sometimes blur the line between hearing and feeling. "Someone 20" is an electro-house track experiencing acid-techno for the first time. Imagine Kitt from Knight Rider (yes, the car) at its first outdoor rave: red scanner lights bouncing energetically to the beats, computer system searching the stars above for any distant relatives: KARR, Goliath, Soundwave, Nightscream... or just imagine a mash-up of the Knightrider theme song and the Dr. Who theme song (Orbital remix) and you'd almost be hearing "Someone 20.""Light Bulb" and "Crunked Up" are smooth psychedelic journeys of acid-techno and dubtronica. Those distant relatives that Kitt was scanning for in "Someone 20" make a grand entrance on "Go Tell Them," a track dominated by robot voices from outer space. Militant industrial beats suggest a robotic takeover, complete with a King Crimson-inspired hair-metal outro."The Cut" and "Emotions" trance out for a few minutes, providing a perfect soundtrack for stargazing into deep space. "The Cut" invokes a slightly darker sound with creeping drum-n-bass synths. The melodies sometimes get excited, but never out of control. A slow and steady rhythm keeps everything in step. "Emotions" has a touch of Dirty South drum sounds; its energy is slow and conservative like sweltering summer days. "3 Minutes" is very ambient. It seems to tiptoe past as if it doesn't want any attention. "Pleasure" draws on the spaced out acid-electro of "Someone 20" but adds occasional vocal clips on top. "26 Basslines" was clearly made to be a club banger. It doesn't just wobble out of giant sub-woofers, it KRUMPS out! The tempo picks up slightly on this one, but the use of dramatic pauses reins everything back in again. The music gets progressively more mellow from this point out; we are returned to our former reality with the smooth sounds of jazz.
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