HEXSTATIC – DISTORTED MINDS (NINJATUNE)
March 9th, 2005 by rui
A post-festival message from Hexstatic…
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Thanks to all in the club tent Saturday, all the Big Chill staff and crew, ZenTV, Bonobo, Treva, Kev and DK who rocked a serious selection, the CanCan girls (one of who got chucked off site later for punching a security guard!). We had a fantastic time. Re-live some of those Big Chill moments – some of the tracks we played on Sat in the mix here.
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Review of Hexstatic’s Distorted Minds
Hexstatic, the wonder boys of AV, are all set for a big day on Thursday, 10th March 2005 with secret events planned all over London, for the release of their latest single ‘Distorted Minds’.
This, the latest offering from their last LP, ‘Masterview’ should turn a few heads. You could be convinced that you weren’t listening to Hexstatic, the first time you put this on; the style of the tune is more akin to left field break producers like B.L.I.M. or Freq Nasty, with its half step hard tech sounds and rhythms. The vocal, supplied by Juice Aleem, compliments the tune excellently and further goes to show theburgeoning talent that the UK has with rappers at the moment.
Remix duties come from the mighty maestros Zero DB and this remix is right on the button. I defy any dance floor to resist neither the twisted broken beat nor the enticing filter play and tweeks that Zero Db have added as the melody moves in and out of focus on these colossal versions (one instrumental and one vocal)
To add contrast, the release comes with ‘Perfect Bird’ a lovely melodic, piano based down-tempo number originally written by Guitar Vader (also off the ‘Masterview’ LP) that, with its beautiful Japanese vocal, drifts through you head, making it bounce in a most reassuring way. A quirky reworking of this tune comes from Rainstick Orchestra completes the audio section of the disc.
Also on the CD are three music videos, one for the Distorted Mind original, one for the Zero Db vocal remix and one of Perfect Bird.
The Distorted Mind videos are a powerful, but simple black and white affair, with just the head of Juice as its main focus with text and images flying out of the rappers mouth, used to emphasise the words and phrases, which is a nice idea though I did feel slightly let down by some of the image choices, as they looked like they’d been downloaded off Google and roughly pasted in, which might work for the lofi feel of a B3ta movie, but here I felt it let the side down. The Astroboy video version of ‘Perfect Bird’ however, is an inspired choice and reminds me of why I love this band so much.
So, what are we going to expect on Thursday? Well, they say that they will be loading piles of electronic gadgetry into a large van and steaming around town, rolling up on pavements and getting their kit and out of the van to blast out tunes from a chunky mobile PA and video projections; possibly ending up at a highly recommended and very popular Bar in the East End – maybe in Brick Lane… or even in Dray Walk. Who can tell? Stay tuned…
Marky a.k.a Mach V (SoxaN)
Hexstatic’s ‘guerilla’ gigs will take place around London on Thursday, March 10th. Locations to be revealed on bigchill.net on the afternoon the 10th.
‘Distorted Minds’ by Hexstatic will be released on March 14th.
