Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Fight Night Round 4

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It’s no secret that EA’s Fight Night revolutionised boxing games. Moving the control scheme away from the buttons to the control sticks was a genius move, and has allowed EA to pretty much dominate the genre since first coming out with it. However, with Fight Night Round 4, it’s apparent the franchise needs something special to continue being held in such high regard. It’s not that Fight Night Round 4 is bad in any way, it just lacks the punch (pardon the pun) of the previous entries.

All the good stuff of Fight Night Round 3 is here – the awesome graphics, improved with much more realistic levels of sweat, and fantastic lighting of rings and boxers; the great sound giving the visceral realism the game is renowned for a bigger impact; and the robust fighter creator which creates eerily similar facsimiles of those with XboxLive Cameras.

For the actual in-ring gameplay, the punching system has been revamped with a new physics engine, and each punch landed feels more solid and powerful than previous titles. Some punches have changed – the haymaker is now mapped to a button press and a hook movement with the joystick, which means players aren’t accidentally throwing them at opponents so much. Likewise, body punches are no longer modified by a button, but instead mapped to the normal punch controls, promoting their importance and use against opponents. Parrying has become a solid block, and there isn’t a momentary opening from blocking – you’ve literally have to fight for openings. Now more so than ever, you need to time your punches when in the ring, get into a rhythm of punching, dodging and counterpunching.

Counterpunching is the key, and the camera will alter slightly and a sound will play, indicating if you can land a punch, it will be more powerful than a normal punch. Landing the punch is often harder than expected, because the opponent will know as well, and can get a good block up in time. This of course can work against you, as an opponent can counter a counter, so you’ve got to be forceful yet tactical when you fight.

Career mode, called Legacy, is where you’ll spend the most of you time. You can choose a boxer or build your own, and build up your stats through fights and training, winning bouts and series and belts until you’re the Champion. Whilst it’s a pretty solid game mode, there are some issues with it. Firstly is its length. I found it simply too long to maintain my interest. I like games to progress quickly, so found the way you win round after round against the early nobodies, and then suddenly hit a brick wall of toughness that is impassable seemingly no matter what you try to do. The amount of time I’ve been stuck at 30, and knocked out with seemingly weak punches and cheap shots is annoying at best.

I realise the trick is to fight lower ranked boxers to build up stats, but I’m far too impatient for that, and I think many other gamers are too. It just feels unnecessary, like a way to prolong the career mode rather than to actually give more substance to it. To make matters worse, the minigames which improve your stats are often overly difficult. Each different type of game gives you a range of stats, but none give you a change to raise all your stats. To get the full range of stats, you need to do very well in the minigame, and some of them feel impossible to achieve more than a mediocre score. Skipping gives you half the bonus, but when it’s only +5 or +6 a stat per mini game, your stats are going to take way too long to raise in such a manner.

So you might choose the bag to rise your heart and chin stats one time, and even though you string moving to 10 zones together in a row, still come out with a grade of “bum”, which gives you half points. And as you can only train once between fights, and fights need at least a month of recovery, you simply fly through the years and it feels like you’re not developing quickly enough. I realise I may be judging this too harshly, but to me games are all about achieving something. If I’m punching above my weight, I should be rewarded, not punished with cheap shots and hard minigames.

There’s also a fight mode, where you can play against the computer with your favourite real life boxers, or two player which is still as much fun as ever. The hits and bruises are as hardcore as ever, and if you have a bunch of mates around watching, you’ll get the same oohs and ahhs as if you’re watching a real boxing match on TV. It’s not quite the party game Rockband is, although it in nearly just as fun playing as it is watching. Online the game is as good as its predecessor, with little lag. Boxing games seem to attract a hardcore crowd online, so prepare for some smacktalk.

Sound was mentioned briefly before, and it’s still great, with impact sounds sounding heavy and forceful. Additionally, there has been some great work integrating the soundtrack into the whole game.Whilst being full of the usual EA tracks, spanning multiple genres such as hiphop, funk, and rock, with some being good and others not so good, during loading screens the tune that was playing in the menu is cut back and looped, and later continues with a different effects process depending on if you’re in a ring, a stadium, or the gym. It’s a subtle but clever way of making you feel as part of the game or story, and not just jumping from menu to menu.

Conclusion:
Fight Night Round 4 is a solid game, different enough from its predecessor to warrant a play through, but I’m not completely convinced there’s enough of a change to make someone who loves Fight Night Round 3 to change. The changes appear more subtle, and whilst technically it’s a better game, I didn’t get as much fun out of it this as I did Fight Night 3.

Pros:
Great boxing action, refined for a more tactical style of game
Great to play two player
Fantastic visuals.
Awesome use of sound

Cons:
Minigames too difficult
Feels like they’ve made things deliberately too hard to prolong gameplay in Legacy mode.

80/100

inthemix.com.au, Review, Writing

Fat Freddy’s Drop – Dr Boondigga and the Big BW

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Fat Freddy’s Drop can easily be described in one word – smooth. Everything about this album is smooth, relaxed, and wonderful. They one of those bands who you can listen to again and again and always find something new in their music. The first listen you might be taken into by the groove, the second you might get simply enchanted with Dallas Tamaira’s voice and on subsequent listens you might get a deeper understanding of the lyrics.

The album begins with the Big BW, a laid back mellow tune that rolls along smoothly, reminding me a little of Sade’s No Ordinary Love. Something I really love about this album is the way different genres can be encased in the one track, which is showcased on Shiverman. An excellent dubby house like tune which uses reverb and echo on Dallas’ voice to build the vibe up and up, and then breaks down into a horn filled funk out. The Camel is a slow groove track featuring the wonderful Alice Russell, with one of the funkiest keyboard endings for two decades.

The Nod is aptly named, because this is what you must do to the funky soul. The great thing about this tune is mid track it breaks out into an almost ragtime jazz time signature! It’s completely unexpected and utterly fantastic. The Raft is very much a dub reggae tune, with lyrics such as “although we may not be many my people are ready for the storm to come” and the reggae horn stabs accentuating every beat.

All the tunes on the album are awesome, and although this is their second album they’ve bypassed the sophomore slump, delivering a smooth and pleasurable listening experience that’s sure to please existing fans and gain them a whole lot more.

Film, inthemix.com.au, Review, Writing

Bananaz

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When you really think about it Gorillaz, the brainchild of Damon Albarn (Blur) and Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl), is a pretty fucked up concept. You’ve got an animated band, made up from real world band members (the lead who is quite famous and identifiable in his own right) who think they’re famous, who go on tour in a real world setting. Bananaz is the documentary which follows the six year process of the Gorillaz from just past conception to the live tour of the animated Gorillaz rock band across America.

It’s a fly-on-the-wall, home movie kind of documentary, and director Ceri Levy shows you both the highlights and lowlights of the band’s career, and a hell of a lot of bickering and farting in between. The highlights are the massive Gorillaz Festival, with Dennis Hopper, De la Soul, Shaun Ryder, Nina Cherry and more joining Albarn on stage in the USA. One of the lowlights was the departure of the band’s bass player before their first tour of the USA, leaving Albarn vomiting with nervousness before going on stage. There’s no explanation given for his departure, and this annoyed me.

The other people in the film are generally playing second fiddle to the Albarn and Hewlett show. There’s an excellent scene with Buena Vista Social Club singer Ibrahim Ferrer, but then he’s nowhere else to be seen in the film. They chat a little to Haruka Kuroda who provides the voice of Noodle, but pretty much gloss over everyone else, including Dan The Automater and Dangermouse.

You do get a good feel for the personalities of both Albarn and Hewlett though. Despite their fame, they seem like typical British lads. There are unexplained scars and scratches on Albarn’s face, again never explained but I like to think it’s from some kind of bar brawl. Another classy act is where Albarn tries to scab a cigarette off Hewlett, and he’s told “fuck off, you’re a millionaire”. Hewlett has an awesome scene talking about how much he hates NME writers, his immaturity shows as he draws a massive dick as a portrait of one.

It’s a funny, charming movie, and seeing the behind the scenes of not only the performances but also the animation is interesting. The debate on how to do interviews as the Gorillaz is eye opening, as is Albarn’s handling of certain interview questions.

However, I felt a little lost at times, as words are mumbled and certain incidents glossed over, never properly explained or examined. I would have liked to see a more traditional documentary style applied in many cases, to get further insight and different points of view. It’s a good film for Gorillaz lovers, but those who aren’t fans may find things hard to follow and not explained quite well enough.

Event, inthemix.com.au, Review, Writing

Mixed Messages vs Against The Grain @ Brown Alley

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It’s a rather sad thing for me to admit, but it feels like it had been over a year since I’ve been to a good breaks party. I’ve seen some alright shows here and there, but it’s not like it used to be. And with all the hype about dubstep, I was a little worried everyone else was over breaks and I’d seen the last of the big parties here in Melbourne. However, I still managed to get a posse of new-to-breaks workmates together, and put my reputation on the line promising them a night of good music and great fun.

Although I look old enough to be someone’s cool older brother, after some to-ing and fro-ing with getting people’s IDs (and what happens with those scans anyway?) we missed a few early acts I wanted to see.

We got to the top level of Brown Alley just as School Of Thought started, and pretty much hit the dancefloor harder than a news journalist hits the brandy bottle. The floor was absolutely chockers, and any fear of disappointing my friends with a bad choice of gigs vanished in an instant as Mr Thought played dancefloor slammer after dancefloor slammer.

He played a wide range of beats from Freestylers to Rico Tubbs to his own compositions, even throwing a bit of dubstep in the mix. Everything he played got the crowd hyped up, and there were masses of smiling, happy faces jumping up and down, throwing their hands in the air, and cheering wildly. It was a very friendly atmosphere, with people coming up and screaming “how good is this!?” or just spinning around and giving two thumbs up.

Drumattic twins stepped up with some weird Russian intro, and the place packed even more people in as they delivered their own brand of funked up goodness. Featuring what sounded like live remixes and vocal mashups, the Twins dropped bomb after bomb. My friend went mental with the Prodigy Hyperspeed remix. I loved when they played some of their older stuff like Smokin’ but the biggest floor mover was Feelin’ Kinda Strange which they teased out fantastically.

I did try to explore the other rooms. Worthy was playing some nice tunes in the outdoor smoking area, but it was too crowded for my liking. The side room on the top level was playing some groovy stuff, but I never stuck around for long enough to get a good feel for the sound. I got stuck in the Mez level at about 4 waiting for a friend and heard some of Maya & Vanya, and enjoyed it, although I was itching to get back to the Drumattics.

I was exhausted at one stage, and planned on leaving at 3:30. But 4 o’clock and then 5:30 came around and I was still on the dance floor, grooving to the sounds of big bad breaks by Snowie and Citizen.com, two of my favourite Melbourne DJs. I mean, what’s not to like about a Thunderstruck remix?

I am so happy I took my friends to this event. They’ve heard me play breaks, they’ve been to some smaller shows, but this really was their first big show, and all of them had a ball. I was stoked too – I made some friends, reconnected with some people I haven’t seen in a while, and most importantly any doubt about the breaks scene I may have held have been vanquished by not only excellent music, but an awesome crowd. Bring on the next party!

inthemix.com.au, Music, Review, Writing

Daniel Merriweather – Love & War

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Although a few knew him from his earlier work with Mark Ronson on Here Comes the Fuzz and with Aussie hiphoper Phrase, Daniel Merriweather came to nearly everyone’s attention through the cover of the Smiths’ Stop Me on Mark Ronson’s Version. Like that track, his album Love & War resonates with a cheeky old school soulfulness, but hopefully won’t get him as many death threats.

Using old microphones and vintage equipment, Merriweather captures the grand old feel of soul, weaving intricate stories of love and loss that belie his young age over mostly melancholy horns and beats. Cigarettes is a prime example – singing about smoking and fighting and gambling and losing a girl, much more suited to the live of someone who is 46, not 26. The first single Change features a great collaboration with Wale, whilst Impossible is remarkably catchy and familiar. My favourite is the more upbeat Chainsaw with funky Hammond organ sound.

The album is produced by Mark Ronson, which shows throughout the record with Ronson’s trademarked beats and arrangements, perhaps a little to its detriment. Although I’ve really enjoyed Ronson’s past albums, at times I felt I was listening to a Mark Ronson album, and not a Daniel Merriweather one. I mean, I’ve heard Version, let me hear you do something different with this amazing talent. That aside, Love & War is still a great album, and if you’re a fan of soul from the likes of John Legend, Amy Winehouse and indeed Mark Ronson, then you’ll enjoy this.

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers

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Wizards of the Coast have tried to capture the hearts, minds and wallets of Magic the Gathering Xbox fans before, with Magic the Gathering: Battlefields. Whilst it was an interesting game, it didn’t really translate the actual skills, knowledge and indeed obsession that the collectable card game requires.

So knowing that the Magic the Gathering card game is best representation by the actual cards themselves, this time around they’ve used what they’ve learned from MTG: Online, and made it suitable to an xbox audience by offering it as an Arcade download. It’s presented a little like UNO on XBLA, with a playing surface that players lay their cards down onto, with graveyard (where you discard cards) to the side and your hand revealed only to you (and your partner in co-op games).

The game’s presentation is great. The cards are revealed to you as they’re played, and squeezing a trigger brings them up close so you can read them in better detail. Each card is played with an effect, so for example a flying creature hovers over the playing field, a healing artefact sparkles blue, scratch marks appear when a creature hits. A clear and precise representation of which creature is attacking and which creature you’re blocking with makes tracking plays easy. The paintings from the cards are reproduced here, and it’s fantastic to see these in high definition. I still chuckle at the Pacifism spell imagery.

There are various modes available to the player on starting the game. The robust tutorial will help new players or those who are a bit rusty. Once you’ve got through this, there is a Challenge mode which sets up a one turn play in which you have to play the right cards to win. These are really helpful in understanding the game mechanics better, and I strongly recommend this for new players before getting into the longer Campaign mode.

Presenting you with a range of starter decks, Campaign mode sets up a tourney with the selected deck against progressively harder AI. As you defeat each enemy planeswalker, you unlock more cards. As there 16 rounds fighting against 9 enemies, you’ll unlock 16 new cards for your deck, as well as the decks of your enemies. Unlocking all the cards for all the decks will take quite some time, giving the game a long shelf life for obsessive fans. There is also Co-operative Campaign, where two players on a console can go head to head with the AI.

The AI is quite clever, as it knows its deck and the rules very well, using these in a very logical and rehearsed manner, but it can do silly things, like attack a creature instead of a player, or play certain cards too soon when a human player might hold off. As all games there is also a bit of luck in who gets what cards out when, and the AI flounders as much as a player does. However, after unlocking a couple of decks, playing the same AI over and over to unlock more can become a little tedious and predictable.

However, this is all really a prelude to the online games. Online you can play 2, 3 or 4 player all against all, or two versus two. There’s also a special mentoring system, where a player can come online and see your hand, and suggest how to combat enemy players.

You can tailor the starter decks with your unlocked cards for off and online play, but you can’t create your own from scratch. Whilst the more hardcore MTG players may baulk at this, I think it’s a clever decision. It reminds me of the sealed deck tournaments we used to play – you’d always have some idea of what you’d get in a standard pack, but sealed decks even the field between players. In the games I played, although I’m not exactly a noob I am very rusty, I felt I was beaten by a skilful player, and not someone who was lucky or had the right deck.

One of my biggest complaints about the collectible card game is you’ve got to spend so much money on getting your deck to how you want, and with new editions invalidating your favourite cards (essentially forcing you to buy more) it becomes untenable for all but the most dedicated players. The xbox version gets around this by standardising the decks, allowing you some leeway to play a deck you like, with winning really coming down to your skill (and a little bit of luck) and not simply the amount of time and money you have.

Yet even new comers will find they can play against a seasoned pro and the games will feel fairer. This system allows anyone to pick up the game and play on a relatively fair basis. Someone picking the game up in six months time will have the same cards as someone who got the game at launch (assuming downloadable card packs don’t get released in that time), meaning there isn’t a disadvantage in arriving to the party late.

Conclusion
Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers will scratch the itch many ex-MTG players have. Although completely accessible to absolute new comers, the game seems just as well designed for those of us who used to play but got sick of the constant revisions and releases and unfairness that came with the collectable card game. It might not go far enough to simulate the game with the inability to customise the starter decks limiting some enjoyment of the game, but otherwise it’s a great way to pass the time.

Pros:
Excellent Presentation of the MTG card game
Easy to pick up and learn
Fair amount of replayablity with unlockable cards, co-op and online modes

Cons:
Can’t completely customise your own deck
AI can feel too logical and predictable
Unlocking everything can become tedious.

80/100

inthemix.com.au, Music, Review, Writing

Hilltop Hoods – State of the Art

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The music industry is a tough industry to be in. It takes a lot of guts to decide to make a living out of it, and takes even more to stick around, and an unbelievable amount to stay fresh and sounding good after even a few short years. Especially groups coming out of a place like Adelaide, which is small so it doesn’t have the population to really support large numbers of different acts; lacking in the venues for them to rock out in; and is often small minded, especially in regards to music.

While there have been some successes like Cold Chisel, The Angels, and Sia Fuller, I can think of dozens of bands who, and in not just my humble opinion but were widely well regarded by many people, should have been huge – Bliss, Mandelbrot Set, Capital F, Kinetic Playground, Sin Dog Jellyroll, Crisp – all of which met untimely demises for one reason or another.

So I think it’s amazing that, considering they started out simply by fucking around for their mates on mics around the same time the previously mentioned bands were packing it in, the Hilltop Hoods have gone from strength to strength, showing improvement in every aspect of their sound from lyrical construction to music production, and never is this more apparent on State of the Art.

After all, it would be easy for them to rest on their laurels. They’re popular the country over, and could just come out with another bunch of rawkus hiphop and be done with it. The fans would buy it, and it would still make money for them and their label. However, you can tell the moment you put the album on the boys have been working hard to better themselves.

In the past they might not have been able to even hum a tune, but especially on The Light You Burned you can tell they’ve worked at improving their vocal range to include singing rather than just rhyming, and it sounds bloody fantastic. Although a lot of the songs are contain themes they’ve visited before such as partying (Chris Farley), the fucked up state of music industry (She’s So Ugly), and ugly politics (Fifty In Five), they feel like fresh improvements over previous efforts in both lyrical and musical arrangement. Gone are the sped up vocals and over-used beats, and real effort has been made to make the songs sound amazing.

Many acts have one or two albums, and then fall into the trap of making what will sell rather than try to push and improve themselves, and I think it’s remarkable the Hilltop Hoods are at record number five and still trying to improve their sound as much as possible. Although I’ve raved about the last few Aussie Hiphop albums I’ve received, I think it’s a fantastic sign for the genre that I’m raving about this one too. I just wish other music genres and artists would follow suit.

inthemix.com.au, Music, Review, Writing

Delta – The Second Story

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There’s something you should know about me – I get bored of music quickly. I don’t like listening to the same stuff over and over again. I once had a flatmate who bought an album and listened to the same song over and over on our stereo, it drove me up the friggin’ wall so much I “accidentally” scratched the disc. If I go out to a club or rave, I can generally only handle the same genre of music for an hour or two before I get bored and listless. And I don’t like songs that drag on for ever, either. Two tracks mixed together for 10 minutes bores me to tears.

And whilst you may think this is some crazy notion developed out of thin air to justify my outlandish views, it’s a well known scientifically researched fact that the best songs are written to be less than 3 minutes. Lovely Rita by the Beatles. This Charming Man by the Smiths. California Dreamin’ by the Mamas & the Papas. Each of which is an undeniably wonderful pop song, each of which comes in at 2 minutes and 42 seconds long.

This probably explains my penchant for hiphop and breaks over other forms of electronic music. These genres are so diversified in sound, and the songs are generally pretty short, they simply gel with my taste.
Why am I telling you all this, I hear you silently scream. I’m telling you this so when I inform you I listened to The Lines (which comes in at 2 minutes 30 seconds) on Delta’s album The Second Story over and over and over, you’ll begin to understand this song is something truly spectacular.

In this one song, Delta, with the help of Mojo the Cinematic and Tom Brenneck and Dave Guy of the Dap Kings has managed to craft the perfect song. It starts off subtly with bass and percussion, with Delta’s rhyme about bad relationships dropped over the top, and builds into a gigantic funk chorus with brass, guitar and singing, and you can’t help but smile and groove away to it. Unfortunately its two verses are over so quickly, it leaves you begging for more.

Although nothing matches the greatness of The Lines, the rest of the album is still incredible. Death Song is an interesting piece, a melancholy rhyme about a cab ride with sparse death-march type horns filling the track. All Over with its minimal beats and funky latin horn breakdown, and Higher Level with Staen 1 are really enjoyable tunes.

In fact, The Second Story is so well crafted, full of clever rhymes and filled with great collaborations with artists such as Mark B and the Beatnuts, it’s my humble opinion that Delta’s profile should be bigger. I think it’s unfortunate he’s not as well-known as Hilltop Hoods or Downsyde, as great as they are, when Delta has the skills to craft better songs. But regardless of what I think about the state of Aussie Hiphop and the theory of popular music, The Second Story is simply a fantastic album and great follow up to The Lostralian.

Event, inthemix.com.au, Review, Writing

Wobble @ Night Owl

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16/05/09

I’ve never been to Wobble before. I must admit I never really wanted to go either, as I was a little afraid of the name. You see, I knew it was a drum and bass and dubstep night, and although I enjoy those music styles, I’ve never really appreciated wobbly drum and bass. It was too cheesy, too repetitive, and I always thought to myself it wasn’t worth going to a night that basically played that all night. Luckily, I was wrong about the show, and have learnt yet again one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Well… for the most part.

I love Night Owl as a venue, although was a little confused as to why we were forced to use the back entrance. I like the fact that there is a decent sized dancefloor with the amazing Heartical Hi Fi Sound System, plus numerous comfy couches for old folks like myself to sit down and have a rest now and then. Not that there were a lot of older folk there, which was something I hadn’t anticipated and I was rather bemused about. There was also a more varied crowd than I expected, comprised of ravers, emo/hipster types, and the dreadlocked peeps, all of whom seemed to be having a wonderful time throughout the night.

So anyway, I found the bar, a pint, a comfy chair and proceeded to sit down and judge the show. I didn’t stay sitting for long… AC23 is a DJ I’ve been hanging to see ever since he sent me a mix of dubstep a few years ago. Somehow on that mix he managed to trick me into thinking dubstep was something it wasn’t… and he did the same again on Saturday night. He plays a variety of dubstep, with different tempos and sounds I don’t usually associate with dubstep. It was excellent and for the second time in as many weeks I’ve found myself really enjoying a dubstep mix. It was helped by the excellent MCs, probably two of the best I’ve heard in Melbourne, who loved the rhymes and calling for the rewind.

Afficks was next up on the wheels of steel, and this is where my interest waned. He’s a great DJ and kept the floor jumping, but the dubstep tunes he played all sounded the same to me, with the wobble bass and slowed down dnb beats. Some of the tunes were just awful – Ready Or Not is a classic tune and it was torture hearing the dubstep remix. However, there were some decent tunes in there as well, such as the Chase and Status track Saxon (I think! I’m not too au fait with dubstep I must admit) and The Special’s Ghost Town.

I was a little worried that after the hours of dubstep that Adelaide’s DJ Fiction, stepping up to drop some dnb, wouldn’t be able to hold the floor. I needn’t be concerned though, as, in my opinion, Fiction is one of the best dnb DJs in Australia, and knows how to rock a party. And rock the party he did, slamming down some new stuff and seamlessly mixing it with older stuff, then jumping forward again. Fiction was having a lot of fun, and the crowd lapped up his expert mixing, cheering nearly every tune and dancing like loons, throwing their hands in the air like a good crowd should.

Cubist followed, getting a little harder and a bit more wobbly in his dnb compared to Fiction, although not quite as wobbly as me on the dancefloor, as the amber liquid had been flowing all night, and sadly I could only stay for about half an hour of his set. But the crowd was still going off when I left, which is always a good indication of a great night!

inthemix.com.au, Music, Review, Writing

Raph Boogie – Le Bump

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Whenever I’ve heard Raph Boogie guesting on a track, I’ve always found myself turning the song up. Whilst he sounds a lot like the other great Australian hiphop MCs, he brings something extra to the sound and now with his full artist album delivered fresh and funky as ever, I’ve figured out what it is – fun! Le Bump is an incredibly fun album, never taking things too seriously, and still manages to be a superb album.

The opener, Boogie Bump, reminds me of Wonderful Night by Fatboy Slim, which despite being on Palookaville is one hell of a track. It’s similarly fun and bouncy, and it’s no wonder as it’s produced by Danielsan from Koolism, one of the grooviest motherfunkers around.

Fore, featuring RuCl and mixed by Plutonic Lab is one of my favourites, and harkens back to the megamix style raps of the late 80s – the track switches and changes and sounds like four tracks in one. Tea Cake is all about mixing and eating cake. You know, the sugary sweet one from a bakery. I’ve tried to find a subtext here, but honestly don’t think it is one – after all this is hiphop and if it was about pussy or dope, you’d expect them to be a lot more obvious about it.

One of the things I really like about Raph is there’s not much braggadocio here. Hush is probably the closest he gets to the usual Aussie Hiphop diss, and being mixed by the Nextmen it’s funky as hell, so is really enjoyable. I Know gets a little bit more serious, as Raph sings about his deceased father, but it’s a respectful homage and doesn’t bring the overall vibe down that much at all. Twister feat BVA, is also mixed by the Nextmen, who bring a real UK hiphop vibe to the track. Emergency, produced by BVA has a great girly vocal that gets stuck in your head.

Although I don’t think Raph’s flow on tracks is much different to any other Aussie hiphop MC, I think Le Bump is a superbly produced album, and the positive overall vibe makes me smile like an idiot when listening to it. Unlike some other acts putting albums out, Le Bump will stand out in a crowded market because of its sense of fun and joie de vivre.

Gigs & Mixes from the 2020s. Writing from the 2000s.