The fifth album from Oakland outfit Blaktroniks busts the hiphop form out of its constraints with a work of remarkable depth, spirituality and innovation. The tracks are dominated by founder Ed Tee Pee and his 60-year-old dad Edward Robinson. Together they take the technique first used to great effect by the Wu Tang Clan where a soulful vocal drifts ghost-like within the music. Edward used to be a soul singer in his Detroit hometown, where he lived next door to one of the Supremes. On tracks like ‘Open Up Your Heart’, ‘Precious’ and ‘Angel’ he adds a spectral dimension against the always-challenging new beat forms and alien dub-jazz dreamscapes creating some sort of hallucinogenic night-club scenario but the sound they’re whipping up is too new and out there for adequate written descriptions. ‘Where’ is devastatingly desolate, planting Ed Snr in a burnt-out ruin of a sound. Edd Jr steps up to the mic on the unsettlingly-honest adolescent reflection of ‘Back In The Days’. There’s also a Berlin connection with Gudrun Gut supplying fractured vocals on the sinister chug of ‘Noon’. Hiphop should always have been about conveying messages and emotions while blazing exciting new trails. This stunning album practically reinvents it. With this and Glasgow’s scathing Fool project suddenly the genre seems able to escape the dollar-ruled pantomime it seemed in danger of becoming years ago.
5 Out Of 5
Reviewed By: Kris Needs
