This second album release from Hipnotik Records follows on the heels of their inaugural “Hipothetik Disaster’ compilation, which featured appearances from artists such as Thavius Beck and Ghislain Poirier. “Monster Zoo’ represents Debmaster’s debut album offering and shows the Parisian hiphop producer collaborating with a diverse range of MCs drawn from all over the world to create an interesting hybrid of styles that sits somewhere between jagged electro-hiphop and overdriven synth-pop.
Curse Ov Dialect make a notable appearance on “Universal Bigot Eliminators’, a track that doesn’t sit miles away from their own orchestral loop-laden productions, Raysles taking lyrical aim at ignorance over swooping European-sounding string samples and clicking electro rhythms, while the doomy overdriven synths and pensive crunching beats of instrumental track “March Of The Monsters’ will have many making comparisons with the likes of Anticon’s Odd Nosdam. “Xplode’ meanwhile comes across like some icy fusion of Kraftwerk and Anti-Pop Consortium, Californian MCs Existereo and Innaspace clinging tightly to a shimmering backdrop of drum machine rhythms and “Beat Street’-era synth programming.
A particular highlight here is “Asile Story’, which features the lyrical input of highly-strung French MC Donkishot, who along with having one of the more memorable names in hiphop, also has one of the more distinctive and original styles of verbal delivery I’ve yet come across. In this case, his agitated “on the edge of meltdown’ flow sits perfectly with the tense chaotic synthwork and nervous hiphop rhythms, adding an additional panicked edge that constantly threatens to explode as his syllables get cut and scattered back and forth. An excellent debut album from Debmaster that explores some diverse territory over its 15 tracks and draws together an inspired cast of collaborators from considerably different backgrounds – this is definitely well worth checking out.
