If the Jesus piece around your neck is bigger than your pistol / it makes homicide okey dokey and your God will forgive you/ just show the Saints at Heaven’s gate you should be on the list / I hear he overlooks manslaughter for a tattooed crucifix.
You learn more when your mouthpiece retreats!
How do you write a review of an EP that you know back to front? Aesop Rock’s Bazooka Tooth was a life changing album and possibly my favourite album of 2003. Portishead is, well, Portishead. The two combined on this 5 track mashup EP are, at moments, divine.
Take Babies With Guns – the original version was a tense, bouncy critique of gun rap that would get your head nodding in seconds. Trumpets circle under almost reggae beats. Bring Portishead underneath and instead you have a brooding, dark, sinister sound. Aesop’s rhymes, whilst still warnings, have an ominous feel and are made even more so with Beth Gibbons’ crooning ‘How can it feel so cold?’
The other standout track is We’re Famous – El P and Aesop’s underground assertion of confidence, flying over Portishead’s Over. The slow Portishead loop circles underneath El P’s fiery first verse. Then Beth slides in underneath El P’s closing rants before Aesop is thrown amidst the tumble of drums and loops. It is only when the song ends with the last five words spat at you ‘Fuck you in 3D. Easy’ that you realise that you’ve ceased to concentrate on anything but the repetitive loop, driving drums and hypnotising rhymes.
Download this if you can find it. Not every track hits the spot – the most difficult being NY Electric/Cowboys, but as a whole, it is possibly one of the best mash-up EP’s I’ve ever heard. It certainly doesn’t dampen the careers of either Aesop or Portishead.
