Remember when you used to like trip-hop? When illbient was a word you saw used in print, when DJ Spooky was new and raw and vital? When Massive Attack and Portishead seemed fresh and exciting, when you would stay awake all night, talking all night to laid-back grooves, secure in the supremacy of yr revolution, in the status of yr heart and soul? Remember when you felt young and sexy and alive and unpredictable? Capable of anything?This under-appreciated gem from Prince Charming has been my number one, hands down, favorite jam of the last six months. I've returned to its late night, spectral world-beat over and over, an itch that can't be scratched, worried at like a missing tooth, like a buried treasure, a hidden message. Menacing, erotic, imaginative, it will take you places. Heaven and Hell. Nirvana. The jungle. This is proper jungle music, everything that exotica could've been, would've liked to have been. The bass kicks like a cannon backlash, disembodied voices howling like Dante's refugees, like a bathroom seance. Like psychosis. Unsettling, exciting, and entirely out of nowhere. This record came to me as a revelation, out of the blue, never heard of it before. A record of a lost civilization, a true underground document. I cannot begin to express, no matter how hard i try, how vital and real this album is, an underground gem, just waiting to be plucked like forbidden fruit.
As i've been wracked with philosophical revelations, striking me down like the Tower of Babel, as my tiny pathetic childish ego has been smitten, daily, repeatedly, i have returned to this album over and over, slipping on my headphones, roaming the streets like a vengeful spirit, into the early morning hours. Beating my head against the walls of infinity, beating my fists against my head, until i'm dazed and numb, breathing hard, sweating. I've let its basketball beats beat me into submission, sometimes nightly. I learn lessons hard, and i learn them repeatedly. This is the soundtrack of my annihilation, my surrender; until i am nothing more than a ghost with ears.
Haunt me, haunt me, do it again. Come on, let's take a ride. Into the night skies. Where the bats fly. Where the angels cry, where they fear to tread, and yr afraid that yr dead, or worse, that you never lived at all.
