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Hundred Strong
- Basement Blues
(Altered Vibes)
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| Authenticity isn't something you can often see, or hear or smell. Basement Blues has a musty pungency, like a dusty copy of an Enid Blyton novel you're inevitably going to find in the dark recesses of a charity shop's bookshelves. For all its faults, it's got that smell. |
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Ben Dubuisson – the production force rumbling behind the Hundred Strong collaboration – knows how to accompany the series of able vocalists who appear on Basement Blues. He lays a carpet of flitting hip hop aesthetics, with splashes of funk and dub (with a name like DUBuisson, it would be silly not to, eh?). Gender-balanced MC duo Def Harmonic (comprising of Lunaversol9 and Jason Todd) appear sporadically throughout the album and provide a consistent vocal base to the various guest artists that appear – singers of several styles and other MCs.
Dubuisson declares his hip hop production ancestry in the opening intro track, the classic DJ trick of collecting vocal samples of your alias (i.e., "Hundred Strong") from old records, and scratching them into some suitably fat beat. A funk feature follows with Joseph Malik singing about cocaine and alcohol, the subtext being some moral message I can't quite fathom. Malik is elastic and effortless as Dubuisson takes the listener on a scratched-up, heavy beat funk journey; the soulful feel returns in ‘Once More,’ but is this time supported by an unsatisfying and rocked-up beat that sounds at odds with Malik's delivery and the feel of Basement Blues in general.
For me, the standout instrumental track ‘Odeon’ presents the Hundred Strong project at its, well, strongest. Dubuisson has a style not unlike (comparisons are always a difficult thing) the now-famous RJD2, but with enough personal kick in ‘Odeon’ and its oriental nostalgia to see off detractors. Delectably fiddley beats found in ‘Mostly Empty Solid Space’ are accompanied by both Def Harmonic member's satisfying abstract flows, but Jason Todd sadly doesn't impress in ‘Hardcore Poetry’, which seems rather uninspiring after the preceding tracks.
Basement Blues is uneven, but has enough meat to keep you engaged. Vocalists come and go with varying success, but generally Dubuisson is there to provide some meaty production. Someone to watch. |
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| Stuart Reeves - 7/10 |
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