Bloke – Blokaj
Reviewed by Sadie O., 7/6/07
Turkish hip hop – and a lot of other stuff as well. Oddly, they’re described as hip hop and Reggae, but I’m not hearing much Reggae (maybe just the drop on the third beat?), but I’m hearing bits of Turkish melodies and… other stuff… Like a lot of modern Turkish music, they refuse to stick to a genre, even within a song. Hip hop vocals, though.
All in Turkish – there may be Turkish FCCs, but I don’t know Turkish.
I like 2 a BUNCH, 7 is also good. Everything is interesting.
1. 0:29 phone dialing, female message in Turkish
2. 4:35 ****single guitar pluck, then slightly downtempo mixture of hip hop (in Turkish) and traditional Anatolian tune and intrumentation. Really cool mashup, wish more of the record were more like this.
3. 3:56 **funky midtempo riddim with trumpets and bells. Hip hop, but still with an odd foreign tinge.
4. 3:35 **dramatic downtempo orchestral backing, Turkish hip hop. Some Anatolian tunage in the orchestration, esp. at end.
5. 3:40 **electronic riddim, bit of flute, female singing as well as male raps.
6. 0:36 jaunty bit of gypsy band tune, male speaking
7. 3:27 ****interesting riddim, with bits of perky keyboard, bits of what sounds like Gregorian chant. Quite nice female singing, as well as male raps.
8. 4:20 **high female singing, rather angry-sounding male raps. Very downbeat, rather strange.
9. 5:05 **downtempo, part sweet guitar, part squeepy electronics. Rather mellow rap.
10. 3:54 ***interesting tune in the orchestral riddim, some deep sort of grunted chorus.
11. 3:39 **funky beat, lots of scratch n’ glitch, but it settles down to rather normal downbeat hip hop.
12. 3:45 *downbeat orchestral riddim with chimes.
13. 3:13 *upbeat electronic “horns” riddim, remix of track 5 (completely different, to my ears.)
14. 4:16 **bass intro, then chimes and violin, beat comes in at 20 seconds in – very subdued instrumental, gets more complex and builds as it goes along. Pretty.