Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein

[DJ PIMP]

Great album... The distorted pastiches and densely gritty raps, up and down, snatches of hope and metaphysical poetry, emotion battling realism, then closing with the transcendent release of Scream Phoenix at the end...

I only ever focus-listened to it in it's entirety maybe a half dozen times; gruelling and rewarding.

Crack clavicles, rap classical.

 

[gumdrops]

i still cant really love this like i want to. well, i love the production but could never get into vast as a rapper. find him too smug/annoying. lucky for me theres an instrumental version of this.

Also unlike a lot of stuff in this sub genre the beats were frequently infected with a touch of the post-Timbalands, rather than just a hazy boom bap... I think it worked because it maintained more of a connection to hip hop "proper" than a lot of stuff in this field, without lapsing into back to '88 retro-orthodoxy...

el-p was pretty diff cos apart from all the brutalism he had a thing for mid 80s drum programming/rhythms too, as well as the usual murky, moody and slow mid 90s boom bap...

fantastic damage is the best ever def jux album IMO though....

 

[Blackdown]

incredible LP. i dug it out about four months ago and it still sounds next.

 

[simon silverdollar]

it's the sheer sound of vast aire's voice on this that gets me more than anything- that weary rage that he has in his voice.

i could never stand el-p's MCing though; which track is it on 'cold vein' that he guests on? came close to ruining the track for me as i recall...

 

[Gabba Flamenco Crossover]

This and Funcrusher Plus were pretty much the only hip hop I bought between 1996 and 2005.

i get chills off the opening:

"Tell me about it... it's a cold world out there... sometimes I think I'm getting a little frosty myself...

Anyone know where that sample is from?

And stress rap is one of my favorite ever hip hop tracks. The production has those sounds bending and receding in loops - always makes me think of subway lines weaving through the city, like in the title sequence of Warriors.

 

[STN]

Gabba, I think the opening is from that 80s film 'The Big Chill'. Anyone confirm?

 

[gek-opel]

i could never stand el-p's MCing though; which track is it on 'cold vein' that he guests on? came close to ruining the track for me as i recall...

He's not quite that bad, but his entire lyrical schtick just makes me think of whiteboys, bumfluff beards and backpacks.

 

[gek-opel]

The production has those sounds bending and receding in loops - always makes me think of subway lines weaving through the city, like in the title sequence of Warriors.

Its like a fantasmic re-imagining of New York, almost a similar thing (from a hip hop perspective) as K-Punk argues John Foxx did with London on "Metamatic", but everything here is rotten and rusted to fuck. The sheet metal strings on "Pigeon" made me think of the ominous beginning to Bernard Herrmann's main theme for "Taxi Driver" actually...

 

[STN]

Metamatic, now THAT is an album. It still sounds bonkers to this day - he sounds like he's hurting those synthesisers; making them wail and yelp. Makes me think of Gully Brook Lane.

El-P's not that bad, but as Gek says he is basically a goatee that's somehow learned to rap.

Must dig Cold Vein out now!

 

[swears]

Never really a fan of "undie" rap, (who would admit that nowadays tho, lol) but I really did lke this album. Very proggy production, somebody told me that EL-P is named after Emerson, Lake and Palmer! Is that true?

 

[gek-opel]

Never really a fan of "undie" rap, (who would admit that nowadays tho, lol) but I really did lke this album. Very proggy production, somebody told me that EL-P is named after Emerson, Lake and Palmer! Is that true?

Naw, I think it stands for "El-producto" - "the producer".

 

[swears]

el-p was pretty diff cos apart from all the brutalism he had a thing for mid 80s drum programming/rhythms too, as well as the usual murky, moody and slow mid 90s boom bap...

Yeah, deffo a Rick Rubin influence on the beats.

 

[gek-opel]

Metamatic, now THAT is an album. It still sounds bonkers to this day - he sounds like he's hurting those synthesisers; making them wail and yelp. Makes me think of Gully Brook Lane.

Have we done a "Metamatic" thread? I was disappointed that none of Foxx's other stuff really comes close to that sound though (except maybe "Dislocation" from Ultravox!'s "Systems of Romance", a tune that NEEDS to be about three times as long than its meagre 2.5 min length...)

 

[vimothy]

One of my favourite albums -- blew me away when it came out...

 

[gek-opel]

One of my favourite albums -- blew me away when it came out...

Yup- it felt instant classic after one full play, a complete and totalizing sonic and lyrical vision.

 

[vimothy]

Yup- it felt instant classic after one full play, a complete and totalizing sonic and lyrical vision.

Did you ever hear the Techno Animal (Justin from Godflesh & Kevin from God / The Bug) album featuring Vast and El-P, among others (Anti-Pop, Rob Sonic, etc)? Good, similar stuff but more The Bug-like (unsuprisingly).

 

[vimothy]

Naw, I think it stands for "El-producto" - "the producer".

"El-Producto, independent as Fox"

Them were the days...

 

[gek-opel]

Did you ever hear the Techno Animal (Justin from Godflesh & Kevin from God / The Bug) album featuring Vast and El-P, among others (Anti-Pop, Rob Sonic, etc)? Good, similar stuff but more The Bug-like (unsuprisingly).

Yeah... was good stuff (and The Bug-like) but not as conceptually unified. Not to get too overly rockist about it, but albums where the MCs know the producer very well and get them to produce the entire record (cf more recently "Hell Hath no Fury") the connection between beat/rhyme is just so much more satisfying...

Right I've got to go recite 40 "Hail Kylies" in penance to poptimism for my rockist sins...

 

[Sick Boy]

Aesop Rock?

Give me a break.
He looks like a girls football coach.

 

[hucks]

God, I haven't listened to Cold Vein for ages. Love threads like this...

Give me a break.
He looks like a girls football coach.

I've got one Aesop Rock album (Labor Days?). It has a couple of good tracks - 9-5ers Anthem, and some track I've forgotten then name of about a girl called Lucy who does chalk drawings on the sidewalk, and who everyone else thinks is weird. Actually, that second track is amazing.