If you've heard of the X-Ecutioners before, it's most likely because you've seen the video for their song from a couple of years back where they team up with Linkin Park to create some terrible nu-metal. These guys are a group of crazy hip-hop decks wizards, and fortunately this year they found a less commercial but much more interesting choice of collaborators in Mike Patton.
Patton has created most of the music for the album in the form of lots of short samples, and then sent it to the X-Ecutioners to be mixed and arranged and scratched to pieces. The result is a lively album of your typical Patton style screaming, guitar thrashing and experimental jazz somehow cajoled into becoming hip-hop, and although it's easy to be skeptical of the concept, it works very well.
The songs range from more or less straight forward hip-hop (with Patton delivering Faith No More style rap vocals) to schizophrenic thirty second sound collages, with a wide range of interesting blends of the two approaches bridging the gap. It's surprisingly accessible and easy to listen to for such an experimental album. Clever choices of samples from war and kung-fu movies add a lot of humour to the album, which has a nicely understated anti-war theme.
By the last track it's starting to get a little old, but even that one earns a few points for sampling Kraftwerk's 'The Robots'. I don't think they could generate another albums worth out of this idea, but taken on its own this album is some brilliant upbeat fun.
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