Tuesday 17 September 2013

29: Vicious Circle - Bagged Out


After two goes, this CD finally arrived in Oakland. And good god that cover: like the Kersal Massive have let Little Ginger Kev loose with Clip Art and Text Effects. Everything about it screams awful. So Vicious Circle, a group I know very little about and what I can glean from the HHC piece it's a crew (Wolftown) and mainly 10Shott and Size8 on this.

It's a wonderful record. One that completely captures what I've truly loved about this list of records: British Rap has high production values (in terms of laying out and blending samples), but it's forced through this funnel of lo-fi-ness. Not in a full on Shrimper type way but it's clear that these records were made for a small amount of money and a lot of production hustling. Us Man is typical: grimy drums, and a bouncing dumbeat, and some Brummie rapping. The rapping is earnest and accomplished - I've been caning the Parlour Talk record and there's something about regional accents doing rap which I find incredibly appealing now. Burglars is a bizarre, almost nonsense tale, over a well placed piano and drum beat: "If the burglar tries to burgle me and the burgler acts nervously, of course I've got stop the burglar who tried to murder me, you hearing me?"

The posse elements come through: there are a lot of tracks here (22), lots of appearances which are generally high quality. It's a solid record through and through. Just that cover though, what were they thinking?

Couldn't find any videos, but here's Burglars:


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