Fake For Real – page 12

CUT CHEMIST MEETS SHORTKUT - Live At the Future Primitive Sound Session

Live at the Future Primitive Sound Session is one of the records which, by the end of the 1990's, played a significant role in the rising popularity of the turntablist movement. Recorded live in 1997, in San Francisco, by two key DJs of the Californian indie hip-hop scene, it became one year later an album in good standard, at a time when cassettes were the default format for these kinds of DJ releases. Also, it benefited from the relative notoriety of its two instigators.

RADIOINACTIVE & ANTIMC - Free Kamal

A key character in the West Coast Underground scene since the 1990's, when he was a member of Log Cabin – a cult band which would give birth to the Living Legends - and later on a Shape Shifters affiliate, Radioinactive had tried everything, with his supersonic and multisyllabic flow. His first album had been terribly lo-fi (Fo' Tractor), the second one had mixed pure genius with unbearable fillers (Pyramidi), and his joint project with Busdriver and the beatmaker Daedelus (The Weather), despite a few anthological bangers, was not fully satisfying.

COURDEK - Synchronicity

When you are based too far from hip-hop's main centers, chasing recognition and fame can become a tricky process. As a matter of fact, only a few rappers from Arizona made a name for themselves, in the small indie world. These are the Drunken Immortals, from the Universatile Music label or, for the best informed, Morse Code, a live hip-hop band. Phoenix and its surrounding, though, are also the headquarters of Avenue of the Arts (AOTA), a collective of rappers known for their collaborations with some Californian neighbors like Busdriver, 2Mex and LMNO.

NOBS - Workin'

Released in 2002, Musicide, Nobs' first album, had some highlights, like "Fair Weather Song", or "Idiot Box". But this was not enough for distinguishing this man – a rapper close to Phlegm's Brad Hamers – from the multitude of Internet MCs emerging from the indie world, around this time. With Workin', however, it was different. Even if Nobs didn't change anything to his formula – this was still the posture of the angry underground White MC, unhappy about the world, unhappy about himself – this record proved to be much better than the one before.

COMPILATION - Bassments of Badmen Vol. 2

Before talking about today's main topic, let's start with a bit of contextualization: a long time ago, in 1996, when Hand’Solo was created, it all started with the first Bassments of Badmen compilation. Just when […]

TOMMY V - Travel Size Drawing Board

Thomas Valencia, a.k.a. Tommy V, is a known name to anyone familiar with Los Angeles' post-Project Blowed scene key players, by the end of the 90's. This rapper, indeed, had been close to the Shape Shifters, and more particularly Awol One. And in 2001, he had released an album, Quarter Life Crisis, with some artists from the Anticon label. Last but not least, along with Xololanxinxo and the Ramos brothers, he had been a member of Toca, a quartet who had managed to mix the punk, indie pop and Latin rap genres, into some messy but exciting kind of music.

TOCA - Toca

For Toca, serious matters had started in 2004, with one of these CD-Rs Cali's indie rap scene was fond of, by these times: a rock and rap crossover record named Dancing with Skeletons. Later on, the band had promised a real album, but it took months, and then years, before anything was released. The group's members, however, were still active. The Ramos brothers, for example, started releasing solo albums. In 2005, the quartet had even proposed one of their tracks to the Project Blowed 10th anniversary album. And in 2006, net31 was supposed to publish the album. Unfortunately, shortly afterwards, this small label had ceased to exist.

CASTHEADWORK - Natural Patterns

Quite often, if one wants to discover a band's very best, he or she has to go back to the origins, to the time when, still young, its members were delivering anything they had in mind, without calculation, limitation or self-parody, and without the pain of renewing and reinventing themselves. This may also be the best approach, to discover Imaginations Treetrunk, a loose indie rap collective from Vancouver.

RED ANTS - Omega Point

The Red Ants have never been top players, in the hip-hop underworld. With their conscious and somber kind of rap, Modulok and Vincent Price were sometimes much too much into darkness. With its martial tone, its banging and noisy beats, its science-fiction imagery, its anti-capitalist stance and the red color of anarchy on the cover art, Phobos Deimos, their first album, had not been the subtlest indie rap album ever. But still, some of its tracks like "Lot’s Wife", "Incendiary Objects" and the great "Future Imperfect", had been particularly efficient and impactful.

BOMARR - Scraps

One can find anything, into the Restiform Bodies' prolific discography, be it official or less official releases, collective or solo works. However, from one record to another, it is not that easy to really notice differences: each time, it is always the same kind of patchwork and postmodern hip-hop, with a few rock and electronica influences, and a bit of weirdness. It always sounds very amateur. It is always some kind of fantasy and exuberant rap, concatenating brilliant and not so brilliant ideas. And it never really looks like a finished product. Which Restiform Bodies album is captivating? All of them. Which of them is a masterpiece? None.

ANTIPOP CONSORTIUM - Arrhythmia

Ah, the stupid nostalgia of the fans; their everlasting preference for the very first records of their favorite bands; this stinging jealousy overwhelming them, each time that other people are starting to love their […]

BIGG JUS - Black Mamba Serums v2.0

After Company Flow split, El-P attracted all the attention deserved to indie rap's central band, at the expense of his two comrades. The malicious ones may pretend that it was because he was White, while the two others […]

THEMSELVES - Them

"I'm afraid we'll have to innovate..." Such had asserted Dose One in 1999, on "It's Them", one of the most notable tracks of Music for the Advancement of Hip Hop, Anticon's manifesto compilation. And he hadn't said that in vain. As demonstrated with the heavy metal leaning cover art of this first album, it was obvious that Them - later known as Themselves - would not make do with ordinary rap.

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