Music By Cavelight by Blockhead (ZEN CD88P)

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over the last few years instrumental hiphop has been given a bad rap, once the tag 'trip-hop' got stuck by the fashionistas the underground that supported the early mowax/shadow releases ran a mile (including some of the scene figure heads) and laughed long and loud at the bandwagon jumpers.

luckily for those that liked the sounds and vibes some labels stuck to what they did best and found artists who were releasing slow beats, atmospheric moods and loops that would easily get lumped in with the trip-hop scene, after all not all of us wanted to hear eminem proteges and gangsta cliches but still wanted to stay connected to the hiphop groove. recently though things have come around a full circle, hip-hop beats and melodies seems to once again be getting the deserved praise in all the right places. even jockey slut have those immortal words 'trip-hop revivial' hidden deep in their current online webplace.

naturally ninjatune are leading the pack as mowax is effectively defunct currently. with the ninja crew having released some class albums over the last few years, comes the labels new star on the block. coming from nyc, blockhead produced aesop rock tracks and now we get this first full lengther of cinematic sounds and hip-hop beats, and its lovely. perfect soundtracks stuff. the music is made of piano motifs, orchestras, acoustic guitars, flutes, violins etc .. in fact the music sounds very warm and natural not cold and clinical like a lot of this type of head music (hello david arnold) can do, but with some subtle scratching making the lstener very aware of the roots of this album.

there are certain choices that do grate though, the sped up voices that appear from time to time tend to become weary by the 4th listen, but when the nerves and emotions are being so sweetly caressed then this is a minor issue for such a lovely album.

initial copies are supposed to be with some aesop rock instrumental tracks as an extra incentive, but when you have created an album of such sonic depth as this then these extras are surely not needed to entice you into getting this?

to finish off the review let's bring out all the genre cliches and wrap this one up in one bitesized sentence : a perfect downtempo cinematic followup to dj shadows entroducing (yes, it is that good).