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Creative control? What dat? Who they? Creative Control is a loose collective of like-minded Deejays, emcees and artists, all united by their determination to champion that prized prerogative which gives the outfit their name. About half way into the album, there is a track called MicroWaveLink which is a scruffy cut’n’paste piece gathering together all the times they’ve been bigged up across the global airwaves (that’s many times btw). This could be down to them having loadsa mates but I prefer to think that it’s because Ben-1 and Sie (the two beatsmiths leading Creative Control) make very-very dope hiphop. Simply put, Left Country earns the likes of Boom Bip, Unkle or odd nosdam the right to be spoken of in the same breath as Creative Control. Following an intro sequence where “Creative control” is dropped over an upbeat pop rap beat laced with human beatbox and other effects, the album gets underway for proper with Collective fronted by the spoken-word emceeing of Cello. This, the first of a handful of tracks featuring emcees, finds Cello inspired to pursue the long road to freedom by an instrumental comprising a bluesy electric guitar riff looped over a rimshot and cymbol driven beat. As Cello speaks on how people are living decadent lifestyles at the expense of the children, his mellow approach reminds be a lot of Faithless and early Massive Attack. Given his several appearances across the project, Cello deserves billing as the leader of the album’s supporting cast of emcees. However, as good as his and other emcees’ contributions may be, it is interesting to note how the album’s most conventional “hiphop” tracks are the album’s least interesting efforts. Perfect Abuse is yet another dank, hostile but most importantly, repetitive track during which Lexis busts a gut to sound intimidating and lay down the law over very degraded samples. The proportion of the album where Creative Control are found working alongside emcees hits a severe low with Tommy Evans’s dire What you see. The only feasible explanation for the poor quality of this track is that it must be a relic from some distant past project - if it isn’t, I don’t know how to excuse the way in which the otherwise impressive Creative Control make a right dog’s dinner with this lame Wu-Elements shrill instrumental over which Tommy Evans trots out cliched simile after cliched simile such as “make you wonder like Stevie at my inner visions” or “flava in ya ear like craig mack.” Thankfully, that’s the only weak offering by anyone across the album and anyway! Contrary to all those previous albums released by UK hiphop producers, the featured emcees are only there to make Creative Control look good. For instance, Cello maintains his quality output with the energising 17 but no matter how good he is, the talking points of this track are definitely the blend of scratches, tribal drums and a guitar sample which sounds like it came from the opening bars of Blur's song 2. In all the instances to which I have so far referred, guest emcees provide complete songs but for the album’s two best tracks, Creative control need only a single phrase around which to build thrilling music. The first instance, This Year is founded upon a single Rola soundbite from the album’s penultimate track and it is around this soundbite that Creative Control deliver heavy drum programming and scratched up crash cymbols over which hovers a soaring vibrato guitar sample. Built to similar specifications, Cascades finds a massive piano loop which comes across like a bell ringing session pitted against some portentous hand and electronic percussion as they stomp under and around a sample from Cannibal Ox’s A B-Boy’s Alpha. It is evident throughout that the primary objective of all the emcees who contribute to the album is to help showcase the beats but they are not enlisted purely to make up the numbers. Indeed, The Numskullz make a handful of substantial contributions to the project and when added to Cello’s meditations and Lexis’s dictums, Rola’s talk of planets being born and doors being opened suggests that this album adheres to the loose narrative armature of a mythical quest. For example, another strong track featuring Cello is Freethinkers where, over some tuned cymbols, he talks about how in spite of lots of spiritual clensing and purging, something’s forever thwarting his realisation as a full 360-degree cipher. Still whereas other producers either wilfully stay in the background or are pushed out of the limelight by their vocal counterparts, here the quest narrated by Rola, Cello et al is the mere scenery in front of which Creative Control do their thing. Odd nosdam. Needs to listen to Lousha's theme , listen again and take plenty of notes as that Female vocal weaves in and out of all the drones, ambient noises, smudged piano and lush brush rhythms which go to make up the dreamy track. On a similar relaxed vibe, Metro Era is one of those breezy mood pieces which could kick off at any moment but instead kicks back and turns into dolphin song.. My favourite fully-instrumental track however is The Ride. The track opens with someone talking about life being like a fairground ride and the instrumental more than lives up to this premise. Here, a continual glockenspiel loop serves as the frame around which plunging string swoopss and several other shifting layers commingle to create a dizzying effect akin to those pirate-ship swings..
Following the melodious meandering of the middle stretch, the final three tracks find the album returning to the path on which it was originally launched with the previously mellow spoken-word orientated Cello returning in a more conventional and confident guise for The Flight. Whereas the earliest tracks featured more abstract and vague lyrics, here Cello breaks out from inside a musical iron lung to ride a string loop and evaluate the progress he’s made toward freedom. The Numskullz’ triumphant Communication concludes the emcees’ journey from doubt to affirmation. Now whereas theNumskullz’ other contributions have the same sombre vibe as much of their album tracks, Communication is full of optimistic declorations over an instrumental driven by high-pitched guitar strumming. The album finishes with the surreal “Hearts Ajar” instrumental which mixes intense Tori-Amos style piano playing emerging from ambient drones in order to battle with a hardcore junglist breakbeat.
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