Saturday 6 February 2010

Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers (2009)


Every bit as awesome as you'd hope for. Unlike Danger Mouse's excellent Jay-Z/White Album mashup, most tracks here do not actually utilise Beatles samples as the basis for a cultural conflation. Rather, Caruana exploits obscure instrumental Beatles cover version: latter-day RZA-like horn motifs blowing soulfully away on Macca's 'Live and Let Die', a Hammond organ riff on 'And I Love Her', or at one point, oddly, a surf instrumental to the tune of 'You Won't See Me'... Cheeky and potentially disastrous, but it works. The overall quality of produckies is high, Caruana is an ace mixer who fills in the gaps inventively; and the Beatles seem little more than a convenient melodic device for a hip-hop redux. Cause let's face it, they were a hook factory.
The rhythmic instincts and sometime 'lyrical esoterics' of the Wu are carried through, but given a new lease of life with fresh beats that merely happen to be reappropriated from Thee Hoali Beetles canon. It's a hardcore hip-hop album first and foremost.
Vocals are lifted from not just Wu-Tang tracks but also the respective members' solo careers, it's gloriously l-o-n-g, the Beatles/Ol' Dirty Bastard skits are classic (heareth) and it's freeeeeee. Or at least it was until the bandcamp.com profile got taken down. Haw haw.

Click the picture above before this shit gets removed by the EMI attack dogs!

One of the few instances of extensive Beatles hook-sampling, this one from 'She's A Woman' with a Ghostface Killah vocal overdubbed:



Dedicated to the late, great Dirt McGirt. If there is a heaven he is up there getting wrecked.

No comments: