You dirty, dirty boys. You started with four, grew to eight, cut down to three, and now go by the name of Scratch Perverts. The three of you, Tony Vegas, Prime Cuts and Plus One, must put in a lot of work when you go through almost forty songs in an hour and twenty minutes. The album, Beatdown, is an obliteration of sound and shredded vinyl captured for us all to hear in the same fashion that Rodney King’s beat-down was recorded. Okay maybe that was a bad reference, but you catch the drift.
The deliverance of noise on this album is spectacular from the get-go of track one “Rat-A-Tat-Tat (Ft. Dynamite MC).” A short intro from Dynamite introducing the Scratch perverts and prevailing three DJs of the group followed directly by the obnoxious music we knew we were getting into by the name of the band alone.
The Scratch Perverts are not alone when it comes to the noise category of electronic music. They actually still carry a decent beat to follow with the noise, unlike some others in their category like The Future Sounds of London. Going through the album is set perfectly for the ADHD, switching tracks on average every one-anda-a-half minutes. There is bound to be a track for every electronic music fan, from house music to jungle to straight joints to bust a move to.
“Subio, Desceu” a track from Feadz, an Ed Banger DJ, is an unexpected dance joint that rumbles right in the middle of the album. Feadz is best known as the DJ for the French singer Uffie. Rocking out to lyrics from god knows where, the track is easily and quickly followed up by Zombie Disco Squad’s “The Dance,” which is featured on many produced electronic albums currently on the market, which is also unexpected from it being considerably slower pace than the first half of the album.
If you’re new to the group, you most likely are not new to some of the artists on the album. Laidback Luke & Diplo make an appearance for their track “Hey” in addition to Laidback Luke & A-track for their compellation track “Shake it Down” which is being played by many popular DJ’s in the electronic music scene today. You might only get thirty seconds of this great song, but it’s follow up by AC Slater’s “Just got Jacked” track which has a groovy beat that’s very easy to bounce around the room to.
The Kissy Sell Out track, “The Kiss,” is one of special interest, for the reason that Plus One (Niall Daly) is also part of the Duo Jack Beats, which is often given respect to by Kissy Sell Out. Plus One also should be noted to be the 2001 DMC World DJ Champion. Plus One might be one of the founders for Scratch Perverts, but his credibility is backed by his award.
Also most notably for this album is the inclusion of drum and bass track “Jungle Music” by Logistics. Drum and Bass is one of the electronic genres that are often left untouched, or only used in their own scene. The Scratch Perverts are able to mix in this drum and bass track with no rough transitions in and out.
For those albums where you need to get amped up and ready to go out, the Scratch Perverts deliver excellence. The back-to-back tracks that consume over an hour are destroyers of relaxation and mundane sounds. Beatdown is an album that everyone needs to have in their collection, not only from a diversity perspective; but for the reason that we need at least one angry album to rock out too.
Artist:
www.myspace.com/scratchperverts
Album:
Beatdown is out August 11, 2009 — [Pre-order it on Amazon.com]
