Monolith Cocktail Blog

ALBUM REVIEW
Words: Matt Oliver

Strange  U   ‘#LP4080’
Released  by  High  Focus,  10^th  February  2017

“I worship the Sega God with the blue fur; my mother’s Lara Lor-Van, my father’s Lex Luther”.

Though the chrome may not be shiny and the cylinders can’t help but misfire, High Focus’ ownership of 2016 (summarised here) is safe in the hands of Strange U’s voodoo children for the New Year. Venerable UK hip-hop rogues Kashmere (The Iguana Man, Lord Rao), and Dr Zygote (The Maghreban), theorise conspiracies through comic book schlock writing its own legend. A classic hip-hop one-two manning long established loose cannons, #LP4080 has a deftness that allows it to be daft, transplanting MF Doom and Kool Keith through zodiac mind warps and Vulcan death grips.

Kashmere’s telling of stranger than fiction tales, sex drugs and rock & roll laced with wild one-liners that’ll either gob smack you or smack you in the gob, joyrides Zygote’s primitive vision of the future made to the specification of a mint condition Dalek (intermission Taurus makes a public service announcement of a space colony being unveiled by the year 2000). Black hole-sized beats, decommissioned Casios, arcade consoles that have long flashed ‘game over’, and electro downloaded over dial-up internet, create the perfect simulation of space’s loaded vastness, always one false move away from catastrophic consequences. If the ship’s going down, Strange U are gonna fly it their way, accentuating High Focus’ cast of many characters that would fill a sticker book.

How you feel the Gs is down to tracks like Bullet Proof Mustache: trying to achieve a body count of the 80s silver screen megastars it references, acting the fool and plotting nonsensical courses is Strange U’s smartest move, particularly with Lee Scott boarding the same vessel like Dave Lister. The unexpected self-deprecation Waste of Space shows that guardians of the galaxy have to start somewhere, without exactly speaking up for the little guy, and Mumm Ra, stepping up the supreme Veronica RIP from Kashmere’s In the Hour of Chaos, plays Russian Roulette with a female species, Zygote taking the narrative on the run with doomed boom-bap.

The emcee’s power up has also sharpened his social awareness. Despite long peddling the world’s end, reality means tragedy must accompany comedy, showing that #4080 is still the devil’s number. On Mr Kill, the star strider inaugurates himself as Alan B’stard (“this is not Jeremy Corbyn in a tie-dye vest…the type of sub-human you would love to own the country”), and with the graphic Armageddon of Eden’s Husk – the guesting Jehst rhyming like a correspondent live at the scene – the outlandish predicament sounds like what boffins have been predicting for years, plastered across the front page of your favourite red top.

For all the anecdotal complexity, the sandpapered English is virtually always plain, call and response choruses leaping into the front row in carrying on the good work of Power Cosmic’s Bang! Splat!. The appeal of Strange U’s odyssey is simple respect of the basics in beats and rhymes, no matter how far bent to the left. Syllables set to stun in the middle of an Asteroids field, it’s a first class bizarre ride to and from the far side.