Team Shadetek
WSHT: Radio Mix 2003
(Violent Turd)
If you're a fan of last years amazing Minesweeper Suite by DJ/Rupture, you may find this new mashup/bootleg mix by Team Shadetek right up your alley. Slamming together hip-hop and rap with crazy electronics and just about everything else, it's like having a compilation of some of the best tracks from the past couple years (and before) all thrown together and mixed in a way that you probably would have never thought up yourself. If you're one of those people who thinks that there's no way that someone could mix something with Autechre's "Gantz Graf" (a show off track that works), you'll also find yourself surprised as well.
The release actually opens with one of the weakest tracks on the entire release. "Trinity" by King Honey (feat. Kamachi and others) is deconstructed by Shadetek, but the added glitches and filtering bog things down more than anything else. From there, the disc moves right into the excellent "Hate" by Organized Confusion before slamming into the aforementioned Autechre Vs M.O.P. track. "Gantz Graf" butts heads with "Cold As Ice," and although the splattered-glitch crazyness of the former track threatens to derail things, it actually provides a killer backdrop to the already-aggressive track.
From there, nothing quite holds a candle for sheer novelty, but there are still some great tracks. "Stimulus Stimulator" by High Priest" is mashed with "Good Friday" by M. Sayyid for a super-grimy rumbler while "Akshon" by Killer Mike" rips over the top of the somewhat pretty "In Loving Memory" from Modeselektor on Bpitch Control. In another swath of experimental electronic versus hip-hop, "Patriotism" by Company Flow busts over "Big Loada" by Squarepusher. The attacking vocals by El-P go nicely over the splintered, deconstructed track by Jenkinson.
Elsewhere on the release, Dr. Dooom (aka Kool Keith) flows over Ed Rush And Optical while Autechre makes another appearence backing for Ghostface Killah. All of the above combinations may sound like kind of a mess, and sometimes they sort of are, but most of the time the combinations are so unique that it's easy enough to overlook the moments where things don't fit like a glove. Chances are, if you've heard work by a majority of (or even a small amount of) the hip-hop artists on the release, you've heard some pretty experimental stuff already, and Shadetek are just taking things to the next logical step. Beware of extreme sonics, and get ready to bump.
Rating: 7.25
