Yoshi From A Western Box LP
Reflecting the darker and bleaker sides of British society this LP stands somewhere between the Streets, grimey electronic music and the sounds of the Wu and DJ Shadow fairly effortlessly and manages to make you think about those aspects of life which are sometimes too easily overlooked.
Yoshi’s Muslim heritage is apparent on his vocal tracks, in which he sets about documenting his views on society, and which owe more to the monotone and storytelling-like tones of The Streets then they do to typical hip-hop rhymes. Yet you can’t help but feel that this is the way Yoshi wants it. His vocals work best on the track ‘The Sickness’ driven by its catchy Manu Chao sample. The other vocal tracks don’t stand up has much as this one yet they still convey Yoshi’s ideas through this mix of storytelling and electronically driven beats, stripped down and bare, much like the views expressed in the lyrics.
On the rest of the LP we are treated to instrumental tracks, which are for me the highlight and most enjoyable part of the LP. Dark, grimey and at times hypnotic, his beats clash together in a sound that is definitely Yoshi’s own, and which while not easy to get used to is well worth the time and effort. It’s what hip-hop always was about, appropriating and re-interpreting the heritage of the old school.
This release was written, produced, financed and released by Yoshi, with every £1 of every sale going to a fund for the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, as Yoshi doesn’t just talk about the problems of today, but also tries to affect them in his own way. Politically conscious and socially aware music is never easy to pull off, and ‘from a western box’ shows that music does not have to fit expectations in order to work. Job done.
- K-Per
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