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Beans

Down By Law

Label: Warp Records Release Date: 20/09/2004

6762
daniel_h by Daniel Hayward September 21st, 2004

Beans’s music since his time in Anti-Pop Consortium resembles ever more the hip-hop of a fractious neon-lit future: each new beat is a new street waiting to make a sudden end of its listener. New single ‘Down By Law’ is an urban squall of melodies constructed from wailing, distorted guitar samples and unidentifiable bleeps set over deep rolling bass and cutting drum-work – a thick aggressive funk - each element struggling to overcome one another; each element testing and straining at the boundaries of cohesion.

Taking it all in at once is a struggle even before one has taken into account the non-stop machine gun vocal which is laid across the track with all of the power (and all of the elegance) of a grenade. Like production, like vocal, as Beans raps a track a line, shifting from brag to disconnected image to disconnected observation with no concession to the listener. The result is impenetrable but fascinating and can twist head and limb alike in a cadenced assault that bodes well for the eviscerating mind-warp that forthcoming album ‘Shock City Maverick’ promises to be. Feel it.

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