Curse Ov Dialect – Crisis Tales (Mistletone)

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This music sounds like an evil jaunty nursery rhyme: traditional music from some far-flung part of the world slapped with hip hop beats and slung underneath a dense torrent of consciousness expanding rhymes. Curse Ov Dialect’s fourth long player is breathless, upbeat and frenetic; a very left-field take on hip hop; the kind of insane, creative, weird and wonderful burst of eccentricity that’s so accomplished that it actually sounds like a world unto itself. And while it possesses a mischievous and at times even absurd feel, some of the subject matter, in particular that which relates to race (an ongoing concern for the band) is approached with a rare depth and sensitivity.

It’s best evidenced on the opening track Identity, where MC Vulk Makedonski name drops the White Australia policy. The 11 minute-plus Colossus, in which they’re roped in numerous MC’s from Japan, New Zealand, Germany and Poland to name a few, demonstrates that people from various cultures do have the capacity to live in harmony. Some of their rhymes are positively Shakespearean: complex, dense, and imaginative, particularly when compared with the vacant potty mouthed swill that seeps out of the commercial hip hop genre these days.

And of course it’s like a hip hop party trick, but few things are as awe inspiring as Vulk Makedonski in full flight, spitting out words a mile a minute without requiring oxygen and without tiring. He is a lyrical terminator. He can’t be stopped. Where most hip hop albums are about immediacy, Crisis Tales is complex, multi layered, and all the better for it. The rhymes and beats only reveal themselves over time, yet if you’re after some intelligent complex and slightly ludicrous hip hop it’s worth sticking around to let it work its magic on you.

Bob Baker Fish

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Bob is the features editor of Cyclic Defrost. He is also evil. You should not trust the opinions of evil people.

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