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On Chuck Strangers’ latest opus, Glory Of The King’s Hand, he raps, “I still rap from the perspective of my government name…” The stage name “Chuck Strangers” is, of course, an alias but it’s not necessarily an alter ego. For the man born Che Jessamy, his rap moniker isn’t some over-the-top rock star persona contrived for public consumption, it’s just a name. What you hear on his records is really who he is - a heavy-tongued griot from East Flatbush, Brooklyn with a gift for vivid stream-of-consciousness storytelling. His bars are imbued with the wisdom he’s gained in his lifetime - especially in the 14 years since he first made his debut with the Pro Era collective.


The elaborate title of his new album, Glory Of The King’s Hand, speaks to his gratitude for the hand that life’s dealt him, which is a pretty good one. At age 34, he does what he loves professionally and does it on his own terms. That’s something to be thankful for.


Glory Of The King’s Hand, not only represents Chuck’s matured attiGlory attitude but also his matured sound. Key to this refined approach was tude collaboration. Chuck is a proficient beatmaker in his own right as evidenced by his production for himself and artists like Joey Baevidenced Badass, and Boldy James. But this time around Chuck chose to be a dass, producer in the Quincy Jones sense of the word, bringing together vocalists, producers, and musicians instead of handling all of the beats and rhymes himself. d Up Reprise


The list of contributing producers is a who’s who of underground sound scientists including The Alchemist, Animoss, Theravada, Kensound Kenny Segal, Preservation, Child Actor, and Morriarchi.

On Chuck Strangers’ latest opus, Glory Of The King’s Hand, he raps, “I still rap from the perspective of my government name…” The stage name “Chuck Strangers” is, of course, an alias but it’s not necessarily an alter ego. For the man born Che Jessamy, his rap moniker isn’t some over-the-top rock star persona contrived for public consumption, it’s just a name. What you hear on his records is really who he is - a heavy-tongued griot from East Flatbush, Brooklyn with a gift for vivid stream-of-consciousness storytelling. His bars are imbued with the wisdom he’s gained in his lifetime - especially in the 14 years since he first made his debut with the Pro Era collective.


The elaborate title of his new album, Glory Of The King’s Hand, speaks to his gratitude for the hand that life’s dealt him, which is a pretty good one. At age 34, he does what he loves professionally and does it on his own terms. That’s something to be thankful for.


Glory Of The King’s Hand, not only represents Chuck’s matured attiGlory attitude but also his matured sound. Key to this refined approach was tude collaboration. Chuck is a proficient beatmaker in his own right as evidenced by his production for himself and artists like Joey Baevidenced Badass, and Boldy James. But this time around Chuck chose to be a dass, producer in the Quincy Jones sense of the word, bringing together vocalists, producers, and musicians instead of handling all of the beats and rhymes himself. d Up Reprise


The list of contributing producers is a who’s who of underground sound scientists including The Alchemist, Animoss, Theravada, Kensound Kenny Segal, Preservation, Child Actor, and Morriarchi.

Rising from the wreckage of a war torn planet, Czarface joins forces with MF DOOM in the epic Czarface Meets Metal Face! Blending DOOM's trademark abstractions and CZARFACE's in-your-face lyrical attack, this album is ripe with cartoon violence, societal observations and pop culture musings. Over banging beats provided by The Czar-Keys, the armored team give you the witty unpredictable treats any hip-hop fan can sink their fangs into. Expect beats, rhymes, and metal as Czarface controlled by WU-TANG CLAN powerhouse Inspectah Deck and 7L & Esoteric team up with everyone's favorite villain, MF DOOM. With track titles like "Nautical Depth","Meddle With Metal", "Astral Traveling" to "Madness of Badness" this album packs a punch with 16 brand new tracks. Add that with features from Open Mike Eagle and Jedi Mind Tricks' Vinnie Paz, we promise you mind-bending metaphors and brain-melting beats as this powerful pairing sounds off in March 2018! Long time rumored full length collaboration album from Czarface and MF DOOM, fan favorite "Ka-Bang" from Czarface's 2015 sophomore LP Every Hero Needs A Villain had fans begging for more. Cover Art by clothing brand Mishka's head designer Lamour Supreme. Album features Vinnie Paz of the legendary Jedi Mind Tricks, and Open Mike Eagle, who's most recent album "Brick Body Kids Still Daydream" was on Rolling Stone & Pitchforks top 50 albums of 2017 list. The albums lead video "Meddle With Metal" done by Animation Firm TFU Studios who have worked with MF DOOM prior on the "All Caps" video as well as with Mayer Hawthorne, Biz Markie, Cut Chemist and more!

Diese LP, die ursprünglich 2002 auf CD veröffentlicht wurde, enthält Archivaufnahmen aus dem Jahr 1959 sowie Aufnahmen, die Hal Willner im Januar 2001 (7. bis 10. Januar) gemacht hat. Zum ersten Mal überhaupt auf Vinyl erhältlich, wurde ,DIE ON ME" von Kramer remastered und neu bearbeitet. Diese historische Sammlung enthält die letzten Sprachaufnahmen des legendären Beat-Poeten Gregory Corso. Intim und unverfälscht sinniert er im Gespräch mit seinen Freunden Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Faithfull und dem legendären Chicagoer Schriftsteller Studs Terkel über sein Leben und diskutiert und rezitiert einige seiner beliebtesten Gedichte. Die Aufnahmen beleuchten Corsos Gedanken zu seinem eigenen Werk in aufschlussreichen Details. Keine andere Spoken-Word-LP beleuchtet ihr Thema so eindringlich. Marianne Faithfull fordert ihn spielerisch auf, Geschichten zu erzählen, und auf seine Bitte hin beehrt sie ihn mit ihren eigenen Rezitationen seiner Gedichte. Dies ist ein einzigartiges Kompendium der Werke eines der unterschätzten Helden der modernen Poesie, produziert vom verstorbenen großen Hal Willner. Gregory Corso starb am 17. Januar im Alter von 70 Jahren, nur wenige Tage nachdem viele dieser wertvollen Aufnahmen fertiggestellt worden waren. Corsos Asche wurde am 5. Mai 2001 in Rom am Fuße des Grabes von Percy Bysshe Shelley auf dem Cimitero Acattiolico beigesetzt. John Keats liegt in der Nähe.

In an era where flexing original styles was mandatory to gain respect, few Hip Hop groups were more respected than Organized Konfusion. The Queens-based duo of Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po shined brightest on their 1994 sophomore LP “Stress: The Extinction Agenda,” which is receiving a reissue to mark its 30th Anniversary. Backed by dark, bass-heavy, and jazzy production, “Stress” showcased Pharoahe and Po’s dynamic and ever-shifting rhyme styles and electric chemistry from start to finish, creating an album that is an undisputed classic among hardcore Hip Hop fans.

In an era where flexing original styles was mandatory to gain respect, few Hip Hop groups were more respected than Organized Konfusion. The Queens-based duo of Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po shined brightest on their 1994 sophomore LP “Stress: The Extinction Agenda,” which is receiving a reissue to mark its 30th Anniversary. Backed by dark, bass-heavy, and jazzy production, “Stress” showcased Pharoahe and Po’s dynamic and ever-shifting rhyme styles and electric chemistry from start to finish, creating an album that is an undisputed classic among hardcore Hip Hop fans.

2024 Repress

Innercity Griots, the second album from Freestyle Fellowship, is perhaps *the* essential West Coast left-field rap album of the early ’90s. Released in 1993 on 4th & Broadway, it’s a towering, progressive hip-hop masterpiece that expanded rap’s boundaries through lyrical elevation and production innovation. Their talent was ahead of everybody else by light years. This is pure b-boy jazz.

The original single vinyl LP is now hideously scarce, and of course the sound suffers from not being officially released as a double. This Be With re-issue fixes both problems, and for completeness also includes “Pure Thought” from the CD version of the album. This incredible display of imaginative hip-hop sounds better than ever.

Freestyle Fellowship were some of the earliest technically dazzling rappers to come out of California. Mikah 9, P.E.A.C.E., Aceyalone and Self Jupiter - along with DJ Kiilu - forged their famed lyrical dexterity in the ultra-competitive crucible of the Good Life Cafe. Founded in Leimert Park, South Central LA in December 1989, this earthy health-food store and cafe was where the city’s finest microphone fiends would gather to showcase their freestyle skills at the Thursday night open-mic.

Innercity Griots has been described as the Rosetta Stone for rap styles. The group’s dense, vibrant wordplay and enviable interplay quickly earned the attention and respect of the city’s hip-hop underground. Frenetically trading acrobatic rhymes with agility and grace, the Fellowship used their voices as instruments like true virtuosos, spraying improvised raps like a Coltrane sax solo.

With the bulk of the album’s production handled by The Earthquake Brothers, and Bambawar, Daddy-O, and Edman taking over for some of the tracks, Innercity Griots dances between organic and programmed music, largely forgoing sampling and instead built around live jazz jams. The likes of Freddie Hubbard’s “Red Clay” and Miles Davis’s “Black Comedy” were used more as templates for house band The Underground Railroad Band to spiral out from. As Pitchfork noted in their recent 9.0 review of this classic album, “Freestyle Fellowship embodied the style and spirit of jazz on a molecular level. They shared the effortless cool and tough countenance of the great bebop players from the ’50s without verging into jazz-rap parody. Their innate jazziness felt tangible and hard-earned”.

The unusual approach to the music was matched by the Fellowship’s lyrics. Eschewing the tired rap tropes of the time, this multifaceted album instead explores their ruminations on greed and homelessness, weed, sex, survival, insecurity and tribalism.

Remastered by Simon Francis for double vinyl and cut by Pete Norman, we hope this long-overdue re-issue of Innercity Griots satisfies the legions of fans that have since been bewitched by the majesty of this record. It should also introduce some new listeners to yet another overlooked classic.

A tech company's "senior spirit guide" finally comes to the defense of the "financially unsuccessful" Vincent van Gogh; wonders of the natural world are reimagined as "muster points for brainstorming innovators"; the "artificial char lines" on fast-food burgers are cited as if signs of the apocalypse. For the better part of three decades, Aesop Rock has used the syntax of the moment to pinpoint the fault lines in that moment's supposedly solid foundation. With his tenth album, Integrated Tech Solutions, Aes wields insidious corporatespeak as a tool to pry that parasitic worldview away from the parts of life that truly matter.



A concept album about an organization offering "lifestyle- and industry-specific applications designed to curate a desired multi-experience," Integrated Tech Solutions picks apart the charlatan language that hears app inventors put themselves on continuums starting with cavemen and continuing through da Vinci. On "Mindful Solutionism," the wheel evolves seamlessly into modern agriculture—and then into atomic bombs, Agent Orange, cigarettes, and surveillance cameras. In a rare moment of transparency, the engineers Aes give voice to sum up this spiral in just a few words: "We cannot be trusted with the stuff that we come up with."



Appropriately, the album sounds like the past and future at once. Largely self-produced, Integrated Tech Solutions catches Aes at his leanest and most innovative, leveraging "Solutionism"'s careening bounce against the wistful "By the River" or the slow creep of "Salt and Pepper Squid." The effect is a record that sounds itself like an organism growing, mutating, hurtling toward profitability-and then destruction. As fans have come to expect, Aes is cuttingly funny and slyly profound at once, whether recounting a childhood restaurant run-in with Mr. T ("100 Feet Tall") or quipping, on "Pigeonome- try," that "white dove is a pigeon-you motherfuckers is bigots." At the same time, Integrated Tech Solutions is working on another parallel project: tracing the sprawl of modernity and cutting directly to its core. "I've been doing laps of the lost worlds," he raps on "All City Nerve Map," sounding at once wearied and reinvigorated. "I can draw a map to the raw nerve."






[f] Kyanite Toothpick [feat. Hanni El Khatib]




[k] Bermuda [feat. Lealani Teano]


[n] Forward Compatibility Engine [feat. Rob Sonic]



[r] Black Snow [feat. Nikki Jean]

A tech company's "senior spirit guide" finally comes to the defense of the "financially unsuccessful" Vincent van Gogh; wonders of the natural world are reimagined as "muster points for brainstorming innovators"; the "artificial char lines" on fast-food burgers are cited as if signs of the apocalypse. For the better part of three decades, Aesop Rock has used the syntax of the moment to pinpoint the fault lines in that moment's supposedly solid foundation. With his tenth album, Integrated Tech Solutions, Aes wields insidious corporatespeak as a tool to pry that parasitic worldview away from the parts of life that truly matter. A concept album about an organization offering "lifestyle- and industry-specific applications designed to curate a desired multi-experience," Integrated Tech Solutions picks apart the charlatan language that hears app inventors put themselves on continuums starting with cavemen and continuing through da Vinci. On "Mindful Solutionism," the wheel evolves seamlessly into modern agriculture - and then into atomic bombs, Agent Orange, cigarettes, and surveillance cameras. In a rare moment of transparency, the engineers Aes give voice to sum up this spiral in just a few words: "We cannot be trusted with the stuff that we come up with." Appropriately, the album sounds like the past and future at once. Largely self-produced, Integrated Tech Solutions catches Aes at his leanest and most innovative, leveraging "SolutionismÖs careening bounce against the wistful "By the River" or the slow creep of "Salt and Pepper Squid." The effect is a record that sounds itself like an organism growing, mutating, hurtling toward profitability - and then destruction. As fans have come to expect, Aes is cuttingly funny and slyly profound at once, whether recounting a childhood restaurant run-in with Mr. T ("100 Feet Tall") or quipping, on "Pigeonometry," that "white dove is a pigeon - you motherfuckers is bigots." At the same time, Integrated Tech Solutions is working on another parallel project: tracing the sprawl of modernity and cutting directly to its core. "I've been doing laps of the lost worlds," he raps on "All City Nerve Map," sounding at once wearied and reinvigorated. "I can draw a map to the raw nerve."

Didattica is the first album from Zetas, a female rap duo coming straight out of the city of Salerno, on the south west coast ofItaly. Entirely produced by beatmaker, rapper and DJ/producer Tonico 70, a true veteran of Southern Italian hip-hop,the full-lengthdebut isreleased on DJ's Choice, a partner label of Four Flies Records.

Born between the 90s and 2000s, rappers Annarella and Miriade were exposed to the world of underground hip-hop from an early age, jamming and freestyling. Rather than going for the sounds of trap and auto-tune that are so popular in their age group, however, they immediately embraced the spirit of old school rap, withitsboom bap vibes. As suggested by the album's title itself (which translates as 'teaching' or 'learning') they view of rap as a school – that is, as an art form where constant training is key if you want to stay true to your values and identity.

With the help of producer Tonico 70, Zetas have created a record that is fresh and contemporary, while paying tribute to the past.They rap about everyday urban life in the exuberant dialect and slang of their native city, delivering raw rhymes with a tightand very expressiveflow, while Tonico70 uses a classic sampling approach but also incorporates real instruments into his beats–Antonio D'Apolito's guitar, Peppe Maiellano's keyboards, Giuseppe Desiderio's bass and Giuseppe Limpido's drums.

The result is an excitingcombination of funk, soul, dub, R'N'B, reggae, and even electronic influences,one where deep bass and syncopated rhythms blend wonderfully with the melody, urgency and authenticity of dialect rhymes.

DJ Paul Sitter returns with a new batch of hot hits, this time we get into Sergio Leone's westerns, with great music by Ennio Morricone, whose riffs are used on this 45. This is complemented by rap Anderson.Paak, T.I., Method Man and Busta Rhymes. Definitely a bomb for the dance floors (ask if you want to the b-side clip sent)

The first AE Productions release of 2022 comes in the form of a 7” by J & Mo – otherwise known as J Man (of Cut Beetlez) and DJ Mo Money. Finnish DJ/producer duo who are in the midst of creating an album. To pre-empt the album release this lead off 7” serves as a taster of what is to come - a mix of well-crafted vocal and instrumental Hip Hop tracks with some great guest MC’s.
The main cut here ‘Rhymes Be Bomb’ features Emcee G Roc Gayle (of The Vibe Drops/Piece Of Mind), and is a perfect example of a track that works on 45 for DJ’s with a nice bouncing groove, excellent turntable work and good vocals that are clean so great for radio play.
The flipside ‘Pelottaa’ (Finnish for frightened) is exclusive to this 7” but is an indication of the flavour of the instrumental tracks that appear on the album and features J Man’s fellow Cut Beetle HP Lovescratch on the vanishingly rare vinyl appearance of human beatbox.
Sleeve design and direction by Mr Krum references a vintage board game with superb results by replacing the bombs with microphones which takes the theme of musical bombs and applies the same metaphor to the artwork.

The original Wild Style soundtrack is such a landmark that it has spread its DNA throughout hip-hop ever since. So many artists found inspiration in it, so many producers fished for samples among its choppy waves. If you haven’t played it for a while, it still has the power to surprise – hook after hook that fed into hip-hop history. That countdown from Public Enemy’s ‘Louder than a Bomb’? The chorus from Cypress Hill’s ‘A to the K’, vocal samples that underpin MF Doom classics and A Tribe Called Quest gems? All here.

Phat Kev – aka Kev Luckhurst – teases out some of those notable moments in his superb cut-up from the 2007 reissue. The Brighton-born DJ subjects the Wild Style OST to a classic ‘Lesson-style’ cut and paste, teasing out some of the most classic moments, taking you on a whirlwind tour of the finest beats and most indelible rhymes. Here you’ll find ‘Stoop Rap’ interwoven with ‘Basketball Throwdown’ and ‘Fantastic Freaks at the Dixie’.

The temptation to overcomplicate matters is wisely resisted – Phat Kev lets the guitar of Chris Stein, the drums of Lenny Ferrari and the lyrics of legends such as Grand Master Caz, Busy Bee and Rammellzee shine in their own right.

Available for the first time on 7”, this is an outstanding tribute to one of the key records in hip-hop history.

LP SKY BLUE VINYL/LOSER-EDITION

Vinyl includes mp3 coupon. Shabazz Palaces' Black Up, the group's Sub Pop debut, was recently hailed as one of the best albums of the decade by outlets like Pitchfork, Gorilla Vs Bear, and Variety. Pitchfork summed it up thusly: "Black Up is drowned in murky instrumentals and bombastic, introspective rhymes. The sounds flirt with jazz but also root themselves in a firm understanding of silence, or the sparse magic of simplicity. The songs teem with unexpected climaxes...From great mystery exploded an album of impossible vision." That "impossible vision" has continued to confound and engage Shabazz Palaces fans over the course of four acclaimed albums and two EPs. Each release feels like an evolution, letting the music speak for itself, while slowly revealing more about its creator. With The Don of Diamond Dreams, the group's fifth album, that spirit remains, this time embracing modernism in hip-hop and rap. Featuring 10 tracks in 43 minutes, the album features the highlights "Fast Learner (ft. Purple Tape Nate)," "Chocolate Souffle," "Bad Bitch Walking (ft. Stas THEE Boss), and "Thanking The Girls." It also features contributions from singer/keyboardist Darrius Willrich, Seattle's OCnotes (who collaborated with Shabazz leader Ishmael Butler on the Knife Knights project), Los Angeles musician Carlos Overall, and bassist Evan Flory-Barnes. The Don of Diamond Dreams was recorded throughout 2019 and produced by Shabazz Palaces at Protect and Exalt: A Black Space in Seattle, mixed and engineered by Erik Blood at Studio 4 Labs in Venice, California, and mastered by Scott Sedillo at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Los Angeles.

Vinyl includes mp3 coupon. Shabazz Palaces' Black Up, the group's Sub Pop debut, was recently hailed as one of the best albums of the decade by outlets like Pitchfork, Gorilla Vs Bear, and Variety. Pitchfork summed it up thusly: "Black Up is drowned in murky instrumentals and bombastic, introspective rhymes. The sounds flirt with jazz but also root themselves in a firm understanding of silence, or the sparse magic of simplicity. The songs teem with unexpected climaxes...From great mystery exploded an album of impossible vision." That "impossible vision" has continued to confound and engage Shabazz Palaces fans over the course of four acclaimed albums and two EPs. Each release feels like an evolution, letting the music speak for itself, while slowly revealing more about its creator. With The Don of Diamond Dreams, the group's fifth album, that spirit remains, this time embracing modernism in hip-hop and rap. Featuring 10 tracks in 43 minutes, the album features the highlights "Fast Learner (ft. Purple Tape Nate)," "Chocolate Souffle," "Bad Bitch Walking (ft. Stas THEE Boss), and "Thanking The Girls." It also features contributions from singer/keyboardist Darrius Willrich, Seattle's OCnotes (who collaborated with Shabazz leader Ishmael Butler on the Knife Knights project), Los Angeles musician Carlos Overall, and bassist Evan Flory-Barnes. The Don of Diamond Dreams was recorded throughout 2019 and produced by Shabazz Palaces at Protect and Exalt: A Black Space in Seattle, mixed and engineered by Erik Blood at Studio 4 Labs in Venice, California, and mastered by Scott Sedillo at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Los Angeles.

Now available in February with a big price reduction. Split Coloured Vinyl (Clear & “Schoolly D Yellow”). Olly was a musician, drum-programming wizard and force of nature, and he would go on to shock the world with his in-your-face approach to making music – as bombastic lyrically as he was musically. He simply gave no f*cks, and listeners were drawn into his street-influenced vortex of “b-boy rhyme and riddle.” As noted in the liner notes to this special release:
“The demand for “P.S.K.” was so large that nationwide bootlegging was a major distribution avenue, albeit an unpaid one. ‘Those bootleggers made me big because, when it came down to it, I didn’t have the money to get the records out there,’ Schoolly says.

‘The person who helped me figure that sh*t out was Luke Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew and Luke Skyywalker Records. He took me all over Miami and showed me all the different bootlegged versions of my own records. It was crazy.’” On the flipside of “P.S.K.,” Schoolly gave the world another classic: “Gucci Time.” Flexing brutal brag muscles, it was another gangsta masterpiece, furthering his legend and bringing even more 909 boom to the still expanding rap world. The opening lines are still quoted by scholars of the game today: “Lookin’ at my Gucci/It’s about that time.”

Get On Down presents this classic for the first time in deluxe form, which is also fully Schoolly-approved: a custom 12-inch sleeve adorned with Schoolly-D’s famed artwork; unique split clear & yellow vinyl; a liner notes insert featuring Schoolly’s own look back on the year 1985 as told to author Brian Coleman; and a unique sticker sheet with 8 images taken from the artwork on this 12-inch cover (which was first seen on his early 12-inches, as well as his 1985 Schoolly-D EP and 1986’s Saturday Night: The Album).

AE Productions in association with In Effect Recordings are proud to present the next installment from Philadelphia legend Phill Most Chill, this time with beats provided by Nova Scotia based DJ/Producer Jorun Bombay, under the guise of Jorun PMC - with a tip of the hat to Hip Hop legends Run DMC. If you've heard either of Jorun's incredible Rock The Discotek mixes you may have heard one or two tracks from this 12' in their early form as parts of those mixes. Here at AE Productions we thought it was a shame that they weren't available as songs in their own right on vinyl so here they are with an extra track for good measure and with more of Phill Most Chill's trademark artwork making the sleeve look incredible!
The EP opens with Can't Stop Won't Stop and gets straight down to business. Phill Most Chill starts on the first beat of the first bar almost as if he can't wait to rock the spot. This is pure party Hip Hop fueled by uptempo Disco Breaks, but don't be fooled by that statement - this is no crossover rap music, we mean the type of party that could be found in parks in New York in the early days of Hip Hop. Listen for a whirlwind of extended turntable action from Jorun who slices like a food processor throughout.
Magic Disco Machine stays with the classic Disco Break sound with various nods to Block Party Classics which create a great club friendly track. Again with some serious turntable skills from Jorun to complement Phill's hype rhymes, this is the brand new exclusive track for this release and has all the credentials of a summer party classic.
The final track here The Champ stays with the classic block party theme but this time utilising a raw Funk groove that will be a surefire hit with B-Boys and B-Girls worldwide and shouldn't fail to get any Hip Hop party moving. This could be considered the most underground sounding of the three tracks assembled here.

With a title that suggests great things, making reference to 6 Victoria Crosses awarded to the Lancashire Regiment in World War 1, Mr Fantastic and Coherent (of Journeymen fame and much more) have set themselves a tall order. Before you have even listened to the music, the presentation points to success in this venture, with original artwork by the brilliant Stilts and marbled camouflage coloured vinyl to boot!

100 years after the press reported 'the winning of 6 VCs before breakfast' during the Gallipoli campaign in World War 1, S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive) opt for beats and rhymes rather than guns and bombs, and the resulting record is essential. The initial salvo is fired in 'Ready For Combat' which sees Mr Fantastic combine hard-hitting drums with stabbing guitar chops for Coherent to set the tone. The result is an instant smash which will have you rewinding, as I was, time and time again! From there, the duo, joined by Rola (The Numskullz/Journeymen) and Truck (also a member of The Journeymen), stage a three pronged assault over a haunting beat, spitting verse one after another like a creeping barrage before Mr Fantastic delivers the final victory courtesy of his trademark tight scratches. The concept for this EP is highly original and perfectly apt and on 'Foreign Lands', this is perfectly demonstrated as Coherent weaves tales of carnage that would sound at home on a jungle warfare documentary. 'Lyrical Assassin' once more sees Coherent dropping vocal hand grenades over double bass and electric piano skilfully fused together by his fellow soldier Mr Fantastic. Throughout, the subject matter and music is dark and 'Heavy Artillery' encapsulates this perfectly - Mr Fantastic's thumping, bass-heavy production would have sat perfectly on Show & AG's sophomore LP next to tracks like 'Night Time'. On 'Carcasses', Coherent shows the enemy why he is such a skilled MC, delivering surgical strikes with his tight metaphors and hard-hitting punch lines.

The question, then, given the highly ambitious nature of this project, is whether S.O.E. have won the battle they set out to win. With meticulous artwork, dark brooding beats and Coherent's masterful wordplay, the result is clear. They didn't just win the battle but the whole darn war!