Day 0856 - New Forms

Roni Size/Reprazent "New Forms" (1997)

Roni had grown up in the musical melting pot of Bristol, home of the trip-hop of Portishead and Massive Attack, but also a lot of dub and reggae.   Roni saw gigs by Massive Attack forerunner The Wild Bunch, learned to DJ at his local youth club and formed 'Roni Size and Reprazent.

Their debut album here is an interesting mix of high BPM DnB patterns with dub, soul, jazz bass, and electro tracks.   The songs are generally built on repetitive loops that are given a good 5+ minutes to develop with vocals featuring on some tracks.

I knew the name Roni Size, didn't think I'd heard any of his music but "Digital" sounds quite familiar, so I may have done after all.

Reprazent only released one other album, but Roni collaborated with other artists, did remixes and even contributed to the interesting soundtrack to the film "Spawn" that paired up metal and hard-rock acts with electronic producers and artists.

Day 0691 - Qui Sème le Vent Récolte le Tempo

MC Solaar "Qui Sème le Vent Récolte le Tempo" (1991)

Qui Sème le Vent Récolte le Tempo (Who sows the wind, reaps the beat) is the debut album by French rapper MC Solaar.  The album got Solaar's career off to a pretty successful start, and fair enough too.  The backing tracks brilliantly mix jazz, exotica, triphop, soul and other styles.

Solaar's rhymes... I speak a bit of French but I can't follow what he's saying, especially when he gets up to full speed!  I'm not too worried about that though, as I'm more into the sounds of the vocal than what's being said, and as it happens, the French language sounds pretty damned good over these tracks.

Day 0690 - Step into the Arena

Gang Starr "Step into the Arena" (1991) 

Gang Starr had recorded a few demos and released some singles, but then broke up.  One of the MCs, Guru, decided to carry on the group and paired up with DJ Premier to create a new incarnation of Gang Starr.

The duo released their debut "No More Mr Nice Guy" which grazed the rap charts and caught the attention of Spike Lee.  Lee got them to revamp one of their tracks from the album for his film "Mo Better Blues" and the group went on to score a major label deal for their second release "Step Into the Arena" 

It's a nice, stripped down album, mostly beats and sparse tracks with the rhymes on top.   The only thing is, with just one MC there isn't a whole lot of variety of style.  Some of the backing tracks are quite interesting though, ranging from straight-ahead hip hop to moodier sounds almost similar to early Massive Attack.