- Mon, 2011-04-04 12:09
J.Rocc has long been one of the most influential forces in hip hop DJing and turntablism, co-founding The Beat Junkies in the early nineties with DJ Babu, Shortkut, Melo-D and Rhettmatic, and going on to work with the legendary J Dilla and Madlib in the supergroup Jaylib. Given the nature of his trade, however, his twenty year career has focussed on live performance as opposed to studio work, and as such his new album Some Cold Rock Stuf is the first collection of original material that he has yet released.
Putting what is no doubt a gargantuan collection of records to work, J.Rocc has crafted an album of intricate hip hop instrumentals, weaving samples in and out of each other to create a series of songs that each offer a palpable atmosphere. The range of moods is widely varied. Don’t Sell Your Dream (Tonight) is the most lethargic of the collection; the sound of someone shushing loops over snatches of distant voices and a woozy guitar line that turns into a drunken solo, tottering from side to side as the drums stutter into silence and lurch back into life, like eyelids drooping involuntarily and snapping back open only to droop once more. At the other end of the spectrum is Party, a melee of whistles, carnival rhythms, screams of revelry, Mardi Gras horns and mischievous flurries of Bollywood strings that play a flirty game of now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t with the listener.
The remaining tracks occupy the middle-ground, constantly energetic but not frantically so. Stay Fresh is a brief foray into DJ Shadow territory, an ominous mixture of deep, booming bass, echoing drums and marching horns that would have pride of place on the soundtrack if Quentin Tarantino ever remade the Matrix, and Stop Trying loops a tentative piano figure and quivering strings over a relentless hand clap and snatches of a self-help broadcast to similarly eerie effect.
Chasing The Sun and Malcolm Was Here (Part 1+2) both shapeshift as they progress, the former scattering a simple beat with textural sounds as a vocal and piano sample take it in turn to take centre stage, and the latter seeing a lithe jazz trumpet and whispering cymbals ousted by a bleak combination of loping bass and unidentifiable sounds - not quite melody but almost - ricocheting from one speaker to another. Take Me Away is the track that pays most tribute to J.Rocc’s turntablist background, chopping, screwing and scratching at the only samples of rapping that appear on the album.
Some Cold Rock Stuf is as accomplished as one would hope and expect from someone as experienced and talented as J.Rocc. It won’t change the face of instrumental hip hop, and it is unlikely to leave anyone’s jaw on the floor, but when its fifty minute runtime is over you’ll wonder how it went so fast and why it had to end so soon. Let’s not wait another twenty years please J.Rocc.
