Bike For Three! – More Heart Than Brains

May 9, 2009

Anticon’s latest is a collaboration between Canadian MC Buck 65 and Belgian producer Joëlle Phuong Minh Lê (Greetings From Tuskan). If you’re expecting to find a traditional hip-hop album in the vein of Buck’s 2007 release, Situation, you’d better find someplace else to shoot up.

With music and vocals recorded in different continents and with neither artist ever meeting, this record is indicative of how unlikely collaborations can come together in the digital era. But to what effect? With the inability to look your creative partner in the face and judge their reaction to your latest beat or rhyme, the creative impetus surely loses something in translation. Perhaps. But not on this record.

As Buck’s rhymes were recorded in response to Joëlle’s music before being returned to her, Joëlle maintains pretty much full autonomy over track development from inception to completion. And yet, she has a discernible understanding of how Buck’s flow operates, and how to manipulate it to get the absolute best from it. Indeed, it’s fair to say that Buck has rarely been produced quite as well as this.

Joëlle‘s music is not comprised of the traditional scratchy samples and loops normally associated with hip-hop. Rather, with a firm grasp of music theory and an obvious love of live instrumentation, ethereal and cinematic soundscapes become the realm for Buck’s verbal interpretations. It’s an interesting and experimental way to work, and Buck himself seems to acknowledge it towards the end of the album on ‘Let’s never meet’: “Let’s never meet and regret a past endeavour, what we have is rare indeed and guaranteed to last forever”.

With a lascivious thread running through the album (many of Buck’s rhymes are twisted meditations on aspects of love), the mutual respect between both players could be interpreted otherwise. Nevertheless, this makes for great interplay between them, and the dense world they create is filled with glitchy beats and warm production, with each intriguing piece diversely and compellingly constructed. For example, ‘There is only one of us‘ segues from a hi-hatless hip-hop break into drum n’ bass before the melodic electro-pop of ‘No idea how‘ winds its spectral way across the aural spectrum.

Speaking of electro, the shelter to be found amidst this frequently oppressive listen comes from Bike For Three! covering an MC Shan classic from 1987.  ‘MC Space’ is one of the best covers I’ve heard this year: uplifting and entirely indulgent, its playful nature should send you body-popping your way across the galaxy of kitchen lino.

Though More Heart Than Brains may not appear the complex and intelligent record contemporaries like Amon Tobin frequently produce, Bike For Three! have created a very personal and unique album in spite of being thousands of miles apart.

All there is to say about love by Bike For Three!

Related posts:

1. Eagles Of Death Metal – Heart On
2. Natural Self – My Heart Beats Like A Drum
3. The Very Best – Warm Heart of Africa
4. Holiday listening
5. Nick Oliveri – Death Acoustic

Posted in Music Reviews