As elder statesmen of the 90's UK downbeat movement, The Herbaliser brand has always been a guarantee of something outstanding amongst the smoke heavy swamp that became the post Shadow scene (my God, has it really been so long!).
Operating somewhere in that parent confusing twilight zone that
exists between being a band and a couple of sampler-wielding DJs, they've slowly developed their laid back musical outlook to take in a broader range of influences and styles than most of their peers, whilst managing not to appear as chancers latching onto other people's movements in the search for credibility. This development appears to have reached its zenith with this latest set, the agendafully titled "Take London".
An ambitious record, this album finds The Herbaliser exploring a Hollywood budget worthy sounding, cinematic direction, with huge strings and horns sitting side by side with raw, aggressive rhymes, tight futurefunk and choice breaks, sometimes comfortably and sometimes less so. The lead single "Generals" provides a good indicator of this melding of cultural opposites in its largest, brashest form, but there are a wealth of other choice cuts here as the album sways and swaggers across a landscape comprising the highs and lows of your average hip young B-Boy's record bag.
Opener "Nah'Mean,Nah'm Sayin'" would make a suitable theme tune for the arrival of the first black Bond, whilst "Gadget Funk" brings to mind Tom'n'Ed at their psychedelic floor-mashing best and "Geddim'" sounds for all the world like something pulled from the Stax vaults. A wealth of quality MCs also crop up all over the album, sometimes backed by the boundary blurring sample-driven-breaks-band sound perfected throughout ("Failure's No Option",the aforementioned "Generals") but also accompanied by a more stripped back, two-man hip hop ("Close Your Eyes", "Twice Around" and the Roots Manuva cut "Lord, Lord").
Alongside this more dancefloor directed stuff, a handful of instrumentals and interludes also pop their heads above water from time to time ("Song For Mary", "Sonofanuthamutha" and the flute-toting, beatbreakin' "Kittyknapper"), giving the shapeshifting feel of the record a further boost, but this slowly becomes, for me at least, both the album's gift and its undoing. Despite being very shinily produced and expertly crafted, "Take London" does wander into the box ticking, trip-hop (there, I said it) by-numbers territory which has become so common place.
As I mentioned earlier, every B-Boy's record bag is taken apart, run through a particle analyser and rebuilt in one handy sixty minute package which, despite being very well put together and clearly the work of men in the know, offers very little in the way of anything new or particularly inspiring. In honesty,most of the sixteen tracks here could have been produced at any point over the past ten years by any number of artists and would have been equally relevant at any date therein.
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Whilst the orchestral element to the album is a nice touch, it never quite takes a firm enough grasp of proceedings to become the dominant direction for a tune or two, which would have been nice, and, to some extent, the merging of "live" recording and samples leaves the enquisitive listener wondering whether these more musical passages are the result of some good scoring and genuine musicianship or just a few years' worth of patient samplewhacking sessions and a bit of luck.
And much of the MC'ing here is of a decidedly underachieving nature - only the potentially chart-bound "Twice Around" really stood out for me - and you can't help but feel that there's not much here that wouldn't become instantly disposable if a better tune or two fell out of the sky. Not that these anal elements should matter to the passing listener, of course, when the end result sounds as lush as it does, but in these times when every kid with a home computer is a potential beatsmith, some of us have to start questioning the quality before we're drowned in sub-standard but expensively mixed music that's taken four years to produce. Unless, of course, we already have been, but that's not for me to decide.......
In truth, "Take London" isn't a bad record, not by a long shot. In fact it's perfectly enjoyable in its way, but it perhaps flatters to deceive in giving the impression of being something more sophisticated and grandiose than it really is. Maybe I'm being harsh, but with the time available to signed and successful artists such as these, I can't help but feel its reasonable to expect them to come up with something a bit more impressive and perhaps even boundary pushing than this and that most of my one-man bedroom-band friends could probably match this effort given a few years with not much else to do, a fat advance to live off, their choice of MCs and a room full of decent gear to do it all in.
A fair enough record in its field, but with a little more adventure and some of the time spent on the mix given back to songwriting, it could have been a much more significant release.
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