Monday, October 29, 2007

Fever - Too Bad But True

1. Rubber Cell
2. See You Runnin
3. Got To Be
4. Two Poles
5. Black Around Me
6. The Button
7. Distill Your Brain
8. Fever

For those of you who are still lamenting the dissolution of the Digital Hardcore label stable, here's a treat from 1998. It's hard to believe this is almost a decade old when Fever managed to put out an album that made hip hop for the next decade sound stale and dated. Fever is the discordant bastard child of digital hardcore and hip hop, helmed by Din ST and Paul PM... taking hip hop out of the twentieth century and putting it square in the middle of a post-apocalyptic future that would make Mad Max think twice about heading out of doors.

As far as I can figure out, Too Bad But True is the only full length release by the duo, but it has certainly served it's purpose: nihilist annihilation... serving the Digital Hardcore Records manifesto of "Fuck all", all too well. Too Bad brings out all of the tricks from the DHR bag: C64 and Gameboy blips, slowed and distorted metal guitar riffs and stabs, blown to fuck drum samples, synths so filthy bleach wouldn't begin to help... and as such, fits nicely within the DHR pantheon next to sonic kin like EC8OR, Shizuo and Alec Empire's Atari Teenage Riot. Empire's touch, however indirect, is felt throughout Too Bad. The entire template had been set before with ATR's digital punk rock, and especially with ATR MC Carl Crack... but Fever do the DH/hip hop much, MUCH better. "Two Poles" is the centerpiece, a loping, breathing and claustrophobic. El-P could only dream of making something so gloriously fucked. Shit, El-Producto stole most of his production steez from this record, the other half coming from Giorgio Moroder soundtracks.

Scooters, vacation, fall:

Loaddown

Re-upped 12.20
Please leave a comment.

2 comments:

Chairmaker said...

Thanks for re-upping this- it's interesting stuff. The vocals are a little lacking, but the production has lots of great textures and sounds- the DHR style is definitely there; also I think you nailed the El-P similarities.
Do you happen to know of any similar projects / bands? I like the whole fractured hip-hop vibe, cheers , Dr.

Charles D. Ward said...

You took the standard genre examples from the post-a-blog-thingie type window. It made me smile.