Low-Life | UK Hip Hop Story | Lotek HiFi

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Underground Years:
1990-1995

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Lotek HiFi - Mini Album CD [Big Dada] Release Date :10th November

Tracklist:
01 Voodoo Boogaloo
02 Lo-Fi Rocka
03 Different Style
04 Percolator
05 Inner Storm
06 Under My Bed
07 Ah You Dat
08 Hey Yeh Yeh
09 See it Coming

This is one of the heaviest releases of recent times from the UK. It is really what the UK should have been doing from time. Whilst I do feel the 95 bpm brigade who imagine that they live in New York of 1995, this is the music that imprints our true identity onto Hip Hop. I haven't really been up on the other sound touted as genuinely UK - Garage, but the main extra ingredient for this is Reggae and it has it in abundance. Remember when UK Hip Hop last had an identity? Well it was when there was a reggae feel and this gives me some of the feelings I had back then. The Big Dada press states that ,"We’ve never liked the term “urban” at Big Dada – it stinks of euphemism, of limits, of Yankee doodle desperation", but this has it all in there from Hip Hop to Dub and even Disco. Parallels will be drawn between

On this eponomously-titled mini-album which is unfortunately only 9 tracks deep and weighs in at just over 30 minutes Lotek HiFi don't waste any time at all. It is solid all the way through, it is how LPs should be made, like Nas' fantastic Ill-Matic no fillers, just something you can play and be happy with all the way through. From the upbeat opening of 2Tone keys on Voodoo Boogaloo which informs the listener of just what this release is about right through to the beautifully sung easy warm dub of the wind down track See It Coming you'll want to give this several re-winds. In between there is the downbeat and eerie dub bass laiden Lo-Fi Rocker through the disco sounding Percolator which works, is the most jump up track on here and is set for 7" release, the weed-paranoia blues of Inner Storm, the off-centre brass, skipping beat and echoed piano of Ah You Dat, the so called 'electro-bashy' and the extremely danceable Hey Yeh Yeh with its chantable chorus. With all this packed in it’s hard to imagine a more consistent and refreshing dose coming from anywhere else at the time.

And the collision of styles and ideas is a reflection of exactly where the quartet have come from, a natural extension of their backgrounds, rather than something contrived in the back rooms of a record company.

Wayne ‘Lotek’ Bennett is the ultimate studio nut. He left school as soon as he could and trained and began working at Rollover in London, where he quickly found himself working in sessions by everyone from Leftfield to Peter Andre. But his first love was hip hop and he soon found himself inducted into the ranks of North London’s most notorious rap collective. With them, he released tapes and records, organised parties and played his part in keeping hip hop in the UK going in the midst of a drought. He came to the attention of Roots Manuva, who asked him to contribute a couple of tracks to what would become his debut album, “Brand New Second Hand”. The musical relationship grew and, as well as contributing two of the standouts on Manuva’s follow-up, “Run Come Save Me,” Wayne was asked to act as Musical Director for the Roots Manuva live show. It was while dealing with this that Bennett became certain he was ready to step out on his own and began piecing together the band which would become Lotek HiFi.

His first recruit was Earl J. Still only 19, Jordan Bailey is the son of Jamaican dancehall legend Jack Radics. Radics, best known over here for his involvement with Chaka Demus & Pliers’ hit “Twist & Shout,” has a huge reputation in Jamaica, where he has been a major player for the best part of twenty five years. However, he lived in London in the early eighties and it was here that his son was born. Earl J certainly knows how to draw upon this legacy, rhyming with consummate ease and style at any speed and on any rhythm and adding a hip hop head’s love of content to the toaster’s flavour.

Next came Wayne Paul, sometime black cockney football casual, raver and possessor of one of the finest reggae/street-soul singing voices this country has ever produced. Wayne Paul made a reputation for himself in the mid-nineties with his “Take The Train” release on Sound Of Money, which was played by the likes of Trevor Nelson, Jazzie B and Willber Wilberforce and eventually ended up on the first Fat City “Mystic Brew” compilation. Unfortunately for Paul, his personal life descended into a degree of chaos just as his professional life was about to take off. His triumphant return came on Roots Manuva’s “Revolution 5” (from “Dub Come Save Me”) and, as a central strand of the Lotek HiFi sound, he is determined to make up for lost time…

The last member to join the group was Aurelius. Possessor of one of the most remarkable voices you’re likely to come across, deeper than a coal mine, Aurelius is also a proficient clarinet player (check him on “Ah U Dat”). He also typifies something about young MCs from in and around the capital. As well as knowing his hip hop he actually made his reputation MCing live first at drum & bass events and later at UK garage nights. All of which gives him a flexibility and open outlook which should be the envy of the narrow-minded.

So there you have it, a mini-album taster of what Lotek HiFi can do, thirty minutes of all killer, no filler. An album like albums used to be made, sold to the general public at a ridiculous price. And this is just a warm up –next year’s full release, “Mixed Blessings” will make good on all the promise shown. For now it’s just Lotek HiFi…

(PAY NO MORE THAN £8.99 FOR THIS RELEASE)

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