Vortext The Levels (demo) Despite haling from Woking, as soon as Vortext opens his mouth for the first bar, a rather more northern accent spills out. Geography apart, the rather gruff, raw voice of Vortex layers itself over this six track EP/demo. Sadly I’m not 100% sure as to who is handling the production, so for the sake of argument I’ll assume it’s Vortex as well. In fact, it’s the production that’s the highlight of this demo. In the most part, more emotive than the rhymes, tracks such as ‘1Love’ and ‘Prisoners’ have some rather impressive work on the boards. ‘Prisoners’ as an instrumental wouldn’t sound out of place on RJD2’s ‘Deadringer’ project, with its blunt kicks and strong female vocal sample. ‘Lost’ has a chilled out guitar loop, amazingly powerful given its subtlety. The rhyming doesn’t quite match the production blow for blow. The gruff overtones in Vortexts voice seem to give the impression the rhymes are basic when actually this isn’t always the case. Some of the rhymes do leave rather sweeter taste in your mouth, like the gritty ‘Gaining Ground’, which uses his ruff voice to great effect. Yet ‘Through the Speaker’ has a distinct bedroom demo feel about the flow, with little lyrically to keep the listener interested. Vortext’s debut ‘Immerse In This’ is planned early 2005. Using this as a marker, there certainly maybe a few tracks well worth peoples money. With slightly stricter quality control on what tracks/rhymes make the final cut and through the use of his rough voice in the right way, Vortext may find himself with an Underground hit. - 2Hip | profile © ukhh.com 1999 - 2004