LP REVIEW
WORDS: MATT OLIVER
Ramson Badbonez & DJ Fingerfood ‘Hypnodic’
High Focus Records, 16th June 2017
High Focus’ one-time garbage pail kid found hanging on Task Force’s ‘Music from the Corner’ – “without a shadow of a doubt, the most popular grouch, bad attitude and foul moods” – is swinging a fob watch and infusing the room with brattish British aromas. Ramson Badbonez, a name that has never endorsed figures and findings of less than 100% (just make sure you put the M in the right place), has long ridden with a posse of blue touch paper lighters: a snapshot of RB on DJ Jazz T’s ‘Pick & Mix Experience’ from last year is ideal research into the practices of Hypnodic. With boom bap from DJ Fingerfood the be all and end all, putting heads on chopping blocks en route to bagging a thirteen-course bellyful, Hypnodic is not a mind trick that’ll leave you feeling sleepy.
Breaking the mad scientist mould, a white-collar criminal in a white coat monogrammed with a Jolly Roger, there’s a collective bounce that’ll pull you out the front row before dispatching you back into the masses by dismissive means. Showing his clipboard doodles and lyrical long division on ‘Solitude’, a rare instance of Fingerfood quelling the action with a methodical, even theatrical back-n-forth, Badbonez mixes third eye alchemy, throwing voodoo pins like he’s at the oche, with squalid life from the itchy side. ‘Stir Fried’, living in squatter’s paradise/student digs hell, is delivered with very British pride/disdain, an overlap of fantasy-reality rearranged by the scruff of the neck.
It’s symptomatic of RB’s style that might not directly call out opposition, but will leave them needing some pretty special comebacks to stay in his orbit. Speaking up for producer-emcee dynamic as well, if Badbonez doesn’t topple you, Fingerfood will clean you up and out before the standing count. With rhymes delivered with an emphatic, nib-breaking full stop at the end of every bar (‘Verses Eye Spit’), a 35 minutes long running time means angles are worked sharp and precise – and loud, “condition(ing) my tongue like the one-inch punch”.
Around some Fingerfood tapas served as cohesive intervals rather than self-fulfilling detritus, Badbonez busts mics, with MAB vouching for ownership of “more bars than Ibiza, Ayia Napa or Falaraki”…and then gets the hell out of there (‘Anti Convo’) as if there’s a bounty counting down on his head. The express show-n-prove ‘Komodo Saliva’ in particular, loads up and spews out seat of the pants thrills. The short fuse gives him something of an enigmatic edge some of his label mates don’t carry, even if it’s hardly a persona that exudes secrecy.
When the smoke clears, you’re okay with the fact that Badbonez and Fingerfood could have gone further as bull in a china shop for another half dozen or so tracks. The compact effectiveness of jugular-lusting impact cannot be overstated, and in the High Focus pecking order, Hypnodic is the caffeine boost boasting the exact levels of raw and uncut hip-hop you require. Very necessary therapy.
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