I don’t know what this is. Really I don’t. This offering from the wonderfully monikered Mr.Onono (whose name sounds not unlike that of a Bond villain) is something of a curiosity, sounding unlike anything I've heard of late. Ok, so I'm not one of the country's leading authorities on Latin infused Hip-Hop, but this gem may have inspired to become just that. More knowledgeable and trendy chums of mine have seen fit to chip in with some useful details about our Ben's background for the purpose of this review (and to disguise my obvious lack of musical knowledge). So here goes.
Born in Cardiff but raised in West Africa, co-wrote It Just Won't Do with DJ Tim Deluxe - a song which became one of the biggest dance tracks of the year and which was nominated for an Ivor Novello award for songwriting. Lounge classic Tattoo Blue was included on the 'Best of' Café Del Mar compilation and named 'tune of the week' on Radio 1's Oneworld show. Ben has written for artists as diverse as Cicada, Bob Sinclar and Natalie Imbruglia, and his dance tracks have been championed on both sides of the Atlantic by DJs from Pete Tong to Joe Claussel.
Phew. Cheers for that, you can go back to smoking whatever it was that you were smoking and enthusing about trainers now lads......
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'Caramel' apparently loosely details the fate of one of Ben’s distant relatives, who joined the army only to die in a violent clash in northern Nigeria, the tale of which is told in an almost spoken word style over flamenco guitars and across an unforgiving drum and bass line. I reckon the vocal sounds a bit like that on Paul Hardcastle's 1985 anti-war techno stutterer Nineteen (N,N,N,N,N,N,N,NINETEEN!) but my uber-cool mates told me not so say that as it'll show me up as a critical dunce. So I won’t.
With mixes from the likes of Ashley Beadle and Crazy Penis (sorry, Crazy P as they are now called....the 'P' stands for Penis you know...) bringing a bit of chilled Cafe del Mar-esque vibes into the equation, Caramel has done more than enough to encourage me to abscond further into the hazy world of what the cool kids call Electro-funk...
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