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Live Review
by SashaS
21-8-2001
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| Spooks in da house |
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Live: Spooks
Shepherds Bush Empire, London
Monday, August 20, 2001
The smooth tones of Spooks takes you beyond
A certain spiritual vibe and almost indescribable beauty encases the Spooks' album 'S.I.O.S.O.S.: Volume One' but they've mislaid it on the way to Shepherd's Bush tonight. It's a decent but subdued and reticent performance, almost lethargic in spite of being backed bya funky beats-dropping crew of six.
Their four rappers - Mr Booka T, Water Water, Hypno and JD - and singer Ming-Xia work around the often jagged rhythm but appear to be lacking a gear-shift or two. The male members circle round Ming who delivers some dreamy vocals to lift their soft-rap above the hip-hop standard. Her vocal is warm and passionate, emotionally defining the Spooks' aural stimuli.
When Ming launches into the chill-out zone of 'Sweet Revenge' everything appears to be in tune with the world. Such glorious moments also occur during the sinister atmospherics of 'Bitch Blood', with 'Karma Hotel' and the breakthrough hit 'Things I've Seen' simply melting everything on the path to paradise.
They also take detours into instrumental pieces and improvise a fair bit.
The Spooks members are very secretive about their origins, an approach that even spills into the live show where talk is infrequent and usually just to encourage participation or response with 'nuggets' like "Party in the house!" The pace of presentation left a lot of people totally cold. They're often compared with the long-missed 'Fugees but their mike abusage lags far behind the slickness, elegance and impressiveness of the Lauryn Hill-led posse.
The regularity of it all became a bit too much when the turntablist did his solo-stint; I mean c'mon, rock's just got rid of guitarists getting into gratuitous exhibitionism. Shouldn't hip hop do the same? The backdrop read 'Spooks - Hijacking the Planet.' They're certainly a cut above the army of ciiche-swathed rappers, but the plain truth is - not just yet: the Planet patiently awaits.
SashaS
21-8-2001
'S.I.O.S.O.S.: Volume One' by Spooks is out now on Artemis/Sony
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