THE ASPECTS, THE WEDGEWOOD ROOMS PORTSMOUTH, SATURDAY 26TH NOVEMBER
December 6th, 2004 by susanna
Audacious, funky and vigorous is the best way to describe Bristol’s first boys of hip-hop, The Aspects, performance at hip hop night The Go-Off in Portsmouth on Saturday.
A cool, knowing audience, we stood around disaffectedly until The Aspects (what a charismatic foursome they are), burst on stage and invited us in closer. Their attitude appeared cheeky yet unaffected – less ‘B-Boy’ posturing, more ‘down with’ the people. We were immediately seduced and treated to a diverse selection of tunes.
I’m not on intimate terms with the all The Aspects material, but was thrilled to hear tunes from their stunning new album ‘Mystery Theatre ‘ being aired – check out the tracks: ‘Soul Sister’, ‘Impact ‘ and ‘Stink Bomb’.
The guy’s energetic performance saw beatboxing and scratching, interspersed with phat rapped vocals over homegrown wax. This wasn’t a session of DJs playing other people’s vinyl. It was four accomplished music makers using their own material – their only cover being Jay Z’s ’99 Problems’.
Monkey Moo’s scratching – frenetic, fancy, but still kind of light-hearted, (read – doesn’t take himself too seriously) is something to behold. His beatboxing challenged my own ‘beatboxing-is-boring’ attitude. The audience was suitably enthused – the rapping was energising and danceable, which is not always the case with live PAs of this genre. And get down we did! The punters, a mixed bunch in terms of age and style weren’t having any difficulty in engaging with the group’s unconventional material.
Perhaps their apparent stylistic unwillingness to succumb to music industry orthodoxy (even in the UK the corporates now dictate the hip hop style – but that’s another story!) is what endeared them to the audience.
My only criticism of this gig is that, at times, the suberb tunes sunk into a sea of rapping, beatboxing and scratching. But that’s probably more about my personal taste than a comment on the performance’s quality.
If you haven’t heard of The Aspects at all yet, then you need to listen up. They’ve been around for a decade and are noteworthy hip hop underground producers in my opinion – their new album grabbing respect and acclaim where it matters.
And if you’ve totally missed them on their recent tour fret not – they tell me they’re playing with De La Soul at the Islington Academy December 2004 on the 19th and 20th. So catch ‘em if you can.
Linda Spence
