so i saw this in a store and remember the post that mentioned a possible
v/vm link, promising eh, and then a kind of dismissive negativeland
reference, not so promising, in reply. but it didn't cost an arm and a leg,
looked suitably mysterious with only the words "black helicopters" printed
on one side of the label, so i picked it up anyway.
the overall feel appears to be like neither v/vm or nv, its more like an
updated and very strange classic dj record, kind of like coldcut's original
beats and pieces filtered through stock, hausen and walkman's wild kitchen
sink sampling approach. its not noisy enough for v/vm and it actually
grooves and entertains, unlike negativeland on both counts. its definately a
severe blast in the blatant copyright infringement dept.
so on "hammered gods" what you get is a dub reggae intro, lots of silly
voices and snippets of pointless interviews, the top of the pops theme
looped on a single riff (for the states, its by some band called 'led
zeppelin'), "blue moon" w/ strange gargly vocals, "blue moon" w/ strange
gargly backwards vocals, schooly d in scratch confrontation w/ cream
(according to one of my rock associates), the velvets w/ a hip-hop beat
sounding like they'd be right at home on "3 feet high and rising" (where
funnily enough the big bucks sampling war kinda started), and janice joplin
clearing her throat. all seemlessly packaged into one 10 min slab of musical
madness. fantastic.
on the flip are 2 tracks, the 1st a fairly straightforward hip hop dub, in
the manner of early tackhead or chemical brothers when they were dust, and
"beyond our ken", which is a supremely annoying yet funny loop of british
comedian kenneth williams practising a bank robbery in a really stupid
voice, taken from a record that my dad used to own.
this record does not just fuck copyright, it kills it and eats it too.
-martin