DJ Logic’s avant-turntablism instantly breathed some hip-hop swagger into the relatively straight-laced fusion scene in the late 90’s. Aside from his prolific remixes, Zen of Logic, Logic’s long awaited third album sees more daring collaborations with old friends, new faces and some noted Logic crossover moves.
The Moistboyz are loud, punchy, no frills rock ‘n roll filled with pissy lyrics and
muddy guitars distorted beyond recognition. But what is left out of this picture is a band trying very hard to separate themselves from their “primary” acts – Ween and The False Front.
It is this combination of new styles with their classic sound that make the Funky Meters a hit among later musicians and generations, and this performance is the epitome of that.
On the surface, the name Soul Rebels looks just like any of the endless array of names that your eyes would pass over while browsing the racks at a music store. The result is music that is all over the radar screen, that features one track as a hip-hop song with a tuba playing the bass line, while the next is somebody dropping serious rhymes over a salsa beat. This may seem like a puddle of too many sounds to rope together into cohesive song structures, but the reality in each track retains enough of the traditional song structure to pull off a clean sounding album
The Burning Dirty Band is what it is, and that’s all that there is, so why does this album make me feel that there is much more to it than this? The answer is discovered in two words: raw emotion.
The feel of Cleveland’s music – a combination of Afro-Haitian rhythms mixed with jazz and acid rock – is best described as a drum-circle gone bonkers. Throw into the mix a myriad of flute, clarinet and electronic synth solos with Cleveland’s quirky guitar style and you have the ingredients that make up an avant-garde masterpiece.
