VAST AIRE – Dueces Wild – 2008 – Album review

VAST AIRE – Dueces Wild – 2008 – Album review
HIGHLIGHTS: You Know You Like It – TV Land – Take Two – Graveyard Shift
SOUNDBITE: “Let’s separate the blues from the pink/ I can break it down from ‘A’ to zinc/I could pull your girl with just one wink/ Fat boy got game/ Dontcha think?”
RATING: 4/5
He may not have written the Blue Suede Shoes but like Johnny Ryall, Vast Aire reckons he’s paid his dues, hence, the curious spelling of the LP name. On the other hand, there’s nothing particularly ‘wild’ (in the poker sense) about this LP and all bets are still on - for example - does it sound a little bit like Cannibal Ox? I think so – just listen to the synth swirls that kick off-opener You Know You Like It. This isn’t to say it’s wack. Far from it. But this is an LP that is probably doomed to be damned with faint-ish praise. It’s good but not classic nor particularly adventurous and could probably have been made at any point since Definitive Jux started up. On the plus side this does mean it maintains a consistency in both quality and atmosphere throughout its fifty minute length, despite the fact that it’s the work of nine (yes, 9) different producers (Le Parasite, Melodious Monk, Aspect One, Walter Rocktight, Pete Rock, Oh No, DJ Priority, Falside and Thanos) virtually all of whom have gone for a sub-CanOx sound albeit without El-P’s ball-busting beats.

The main thing that hoiks the LP from the grey pit of averageness is Vast’s raps. His distinctive voice, that always somehow manages to sound both lazy yet awestruck, delivers some pithy battle rhymes as he explores time-honoured themes like how good he is (what else on a track entitled You Know You Really Like It?) and informs others “Come on dude I perfected rap/ You ain’t did shit, you perfected crap”. Elsewhere, Vast raids pop culture for material, like in the blaxploitation/ kung fu/ cartoon referencing TV Land over the LP’s funkiest break (courtesy of Melodious Monk) which to be fair definitely isn’t the sort of thing you’d have found on The Cold Vein in contrast with next track Take Two (Monk again) which might well have been found on Cannibal Ox’s 2001 debut.

Dynamic Duo uses Batman as a metaphor for Vast’s superheroic efforts to save his artform (‘Holy vanilla blunts Vast Man, The Joker’s Kidnapped hip-hop!”) and sees Camp Lo’s Geechi Suede playing sidekick. Its parody of the Batman theme tune’s refrain of ‘Bat-Maaaaan’ with a whiny ‘Vaaast- Maaaaaaaan’ is also fucking annoying, a bit like the original, and despite the humour this is not the track to single handedly revive hip hop though it isn’t actually that bad. The Walter Rocktight produced collaboration with Copywrite Gimme Dat Mic loops the kind of electronic sounds more usually found on early-eighties zombie films even if, disappointingly, Rocktight doesn’t bother to unearth a decent beat while Mecca And The Ox finds former CanOx partner Vordul adding his rhymes to the flow in a track which (rather than under- or over-whelming) just kind of ‘whelms’. The Crush pushes the envelope in the latter half of the LP both in terms of theme with Vast pondering his ‘love jones’ during a teenage infatuation while Melodious Monk proves himself to be the most inventive producer on the LP again by dropping a brace of decent tracks, Graveyard Shift and The Man Without Fear to close the LP.

Monk always seems to have the edge over the other producers here in terms of choice of breaks and samples and gives Vast’s voice the most appropriate platform to deliver his triumphal put-downs – “You tried to say I ain’t fly/ Come on Dude, look at the space I occupy/ Now that’s about six feet/ And when my wings spread you better watch my leap”. It may not be the hip-hop album everyone’s been waiting for, but it is a timely reminder to take Vast Aire’s self-deprecating claim ‘I’m not a rapper, I just talk a lot” (Back 2 Basics) with a pinch of salt – any man that comes up with rhymes like “I came up with cats that didn’t give two shits/ We grew up in the projects with Elevator piss” knows exactly what he’s doing.
(Out now.)
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