Record Review: Planet Of The Fakes - Please Don't Feed The Animals EP

I got the chance to listen to an advance preview of the brand new Planet Of The Fakes EP recently courtesy of Inzaine.
Oh yes.

There is always something unsettling - to me, at least - whenever I listen to a POTF record. Maybe it's the dark forces that seem to inhabit the vinyl or the the in-your-faceness of the Bomb Squad-influenced wall of sound. Every conceivable space in the frequency spectrum is heavily guarded by a snarling, speaker-shaking soldier of the underground Britcore battalion. The 'Fakes lie in wait under your bed while you sleep and come screaming out in the middle of the night with a barrage of audio ammo aimed at your ears.

The posse's large

With a confident hardcore sound at his side supplied commendably by Dirty Showbiz, head-honcho Inzaine has employed a tribe of talent to fill the vocal side of things. Just check out this line-up; Paranoia, Sire, Kraze One, Sinista, Invokal, Whirlwind D (Solid'n'Mind), Inzaine, Ambush, Mr Morph, Iceski (The Criminal Minds), Skitz, MC Gambit (Last Ressort), Invokal, Remarkable (Deliverance, Sublime Wizardry), DJ Kura and DJ HighFly.
It's not a case of chucking everything into the mixing bowl and just hoping for the best. It's more like chucking the best into the mixing bowl and hoping the heat it creates doesn't just burn the place down but tears the roof off the sucker as well.

Repeated listening essential

The title track Please Don't Feed The Animals is off and running with a gripping brass riff reminiscent of something out of The Omen. Damn right it's hardcore. There's an unrelenting baseline underpinning the uptempo beat with Mr Morph on the turntables coming in but not disturbing the groove or the vocals. There's so much to hear and with repeated listenings you catch a waka-waka guitar lick that you missed earlier or a spacey sound in the background. This is a layered production masterclass.

You may have seen the Rain Dance video already and this is the EP's beginning track. A nice production uses multiple vocals to build up the intro and readies you for the main course.
All the tracks are filled with a wealth of MC talent and Bouncin' Cranial Walls is no exception. Using a sample from what I could have sworn was A Clockwork Orange the cut then goes straight into crisp, clear vocals from Skitz who heads up this collab.

Living the wet dream…..

Last week I chose Rock n Rolla to play on the ABU Takeover show on Disco Scratch Radio which got a good reaction with people in the chartroom asking for more details. It's not difficult to see why.
Kicking off with a vocal sample from the film of the same name, we're not playing games here, son. When this drops on a large system you can expect broken bones, bottles and teeth due to the chest-pumping beat and cinematic samples.
If I do have a quibble - and I've tried very hard to find just one - it's that Ambush's (?) vocals sound like they were recorded over the phone as they have a different feel to the rest of the MC's on this cut. However it doesn't detract from the track at all and if anything makes his turn stand out more.

Hardcore Messiah

It's worth noting that all the tracks so far are keeping around the 110bpm area. While that's not considerably head-nodding territory it's still up-tempo. The one track on the EP that is destined to make you go nuts and dance like a spaz is the even faster Battle Of The True Born. Strictly uptempo business demands that frenzied scratching like Q-Bert with Parkinson's must be employed. Indeed it is and the intro is already melting your face as you are pogoing higher than your older cousins did at a Sex Pistols gig. Inzaine and Dirty Showbiz have gone all out to bring you a raw jam designed to bring out the goosebumps whenever you hear it.
Some older music producers have complained that you can't get a natural sound by using digital gear. Fuck natural, listen to the raw energy. Ice T once said the ends justify the means and with a sound like this then Abbey Road can go and do one.

This is a firm warning to those effeminate, skinny jeans-wearing wankers that are beginning to progress that rich-boy, 'hipster-hop' and that is that they should just put that microphone away and go back to Uni.

In the past I may have been guilty of being one of those that went along with the whole 'hip hop is dead' ethos but the last few years have seen a resurgence in quality product - mainly, I must say, from the UK - and we appear to be living in our 2nd Golden Age of hip hop.
Overall this EP is a finely-crafted work of hardcore sweat and tears. If Apple made hip hop they'd have a studio on the East Coast of England.


Respect to Inzaine.
© Reepz 2013


For more information:
http://www.rawmanticdisasters.blogspot.co.uk/p/britcore-rawmance.html

http://www.inzainium.com

https://twitter.com/INZAINIUM 

https://soundcloud.com/inzainium

Only 200 copies (full colour sleeve/insert) are available so you don't want to miss out on this slab of hardcore dopeness.

Also, check out the official video below for Rain Dance.