SOBER & DRIBBLA - Freaks Speak Dark - 2008 - Album review

SOBER & DRIBBLA – Freaks Speak Dark – 2008 – Album review
HIGHLIGHTS: Freaks Speak Dark - Grenades – Cheap Tricks - Ribs
SOUNDBITE: “I licked up her thigh while I sniffed out her cash”
RATING: 4/5
Make no mistake these two are a right pair of freaks - this LP is the sound of your fear getting the fear and your paranoia getting paranoid. In part, the reason for this is a result of the duo’s mission not to recycle any jazz or funk samples - instead seeking warped and deviant inspiration in the hammer synths and tube-train bass sounds of early 90s hardcore – and two EPs down - they bring it heavier than ever on full-lengther Freaks Speak Dark. It is still hip-hop - but not quite as you know it. The opener and title track promptly establishes a tone of menace that lasts approximately – ooh - the entire 55 minutes of the album – as throbbing synths summon industrial percussion and eventually apocalyptic stream-of-consciousness bile from quite a long way down inside Dribbla’s inner blackness – “buried alive, kicking so we feel the pressure/ when our chest breaks, lights gone, buried here forever” a sentiment that I’m sure will strike a chord with many. Grenades, probably epitomises S & D’s sound best adding insectoid shuffles to the percussion and the cheery singalong chorus of “I detonate you, detonate us, detonate them, detonate hate, detonate love, detonate day, detonate night” before disintegrating into ambient synth swells that recall a particularly miserable part of A Clockwork Orange. Cheap Tricks is possibly the album’s highlight – the combination of the heavy syncopation, the way Dribbla adopts a staccato rhyming style to ride this beat and the wheedling synths giving it an itchy paranoid funkiness that lends itself to the track’s investigation of what seems to be infidelity. S & D’s beats are always a real strong point and Ribs (probably the heaviest offering here) is another track that that illustrates Sober’s penchant for complex but rolling rhythms and - if you hadn’t realised already - the duo don’t take themselves as seriously as appearances might suggest as revealed by lines such as “I licked up her thigh while I sniffed out her cash,” or Sober’s frequent habit of echoing Dribbla’s final word or phrase in a camply tortured and rising inflection – externalising the inner mentalist from the minds of the personas adopted by Dribbla. The later tracks on the album are slower and more reflective – apart from the industrial almost-punk of Need but they don’t necessarily provide respite and if the album has a fault it’s that the intensity is pretty relentless. For me listening to the whole album was a bit like being on a train ride trapped in the window seat next to a constantly-muttering prison-tattooed psycho with a violent facial tic who appears about to get off at every stop but never actually dismounts. Having said that I played this to a mate who used to DJ dark and heavy drum and bass and he loved the whole sound as (no doubt) will the band’s alleged Dutch footie hooligan (no really!) fanbase. Clearly it’s a matter of how well you speak dark…and Sober & Dribbla are fucking fluent.
Released and available for download April 2008
RELATED LINKS
Listen to Sober & Dribbla - Freaks Speak Dark
Sober & Dribbla - myspace
www.soberanddribbla.com
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