Hip-hop is a strange beast. When it’s bad, it’s very very bad, and when it’s good, it’s incredible. Unfortunately, this latest effort from GLR falls firmly in the former category. The normally reliable collective recorded this album for the most part in the toilets of the 12:15 from Euston to Manchester. Their decision to leave it sounding raw doesn’t come off like it did in their 1198 album Sun Sweat (which many still see as their best work) recorded in and around Conservative Party Headquarters.
Of course, the album still has it’s moments, and see if you can get a mate to burn you a copy of JG Ballard killed My Bitch (featuring a great collaboration with Jimmy Saville) and the dark and broody Toymaster Closedown (which the band claim to have recorded with ghost of Eazy-E, though there seemed to be no evidence of him on our review copy).
But in an age where British hip-hop should be reaching up for the stars, GLR have lost their map to the powder room: too many lyrics like: “Wings were set with eyes/with eyes the wheels of Beryl/and careering fires between/over their heads, muthafucka” may have been cutting the mustard back in the 80’s, but it all seems a little passé now.
What is so disappointing here is the lack of response to other hip-hop acts - only last month, Killer Fe released an album which he recorded after being possessed by an Enochian tree demon (The excellent Wendy and The Flower Fairies) and Dub Mikey unleashed his double album Live At Kwiksave - and album that showed his own development as an artist. Following the Fluxus group of the pop art music, each CD case didn’t contain any music per se but random bits of gravel and cracker novelties, and a note from Dub Mikey explaining that “…the album will never sound better than it does inside your head, so just imagine it yourself.”
This is where GLR fall short - sampling Mull Of Kintyre and the Are You Being Served? theme tune (written by the genius of Ronnie Hazlehurst - see the theme to Open All Hours, Allo Allo and The Two Ronnies) is all well and good, but c’mon lads - I’m expecting a Phillips head screwdriver and a joke about seaweed from my albums now, not just rhymes and beats. Better luck next time.