scratch perverts

Album Review: Beatdown - Various mixed by Scratch Perverts

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BlackPlastic always says that if you own just one hip-hop album then it should be the compilation album Hip-Hop Don't Stop: The Greatest. Across two discs Scratch Perverts member Prime Cuts manages to create an inventive mix of pretty much every vital old school hip-hop record in existence. It features some of the best mixing BlackPlastic has ever heard, let alone heard committed to record.

As such BlackPlastic holds a bit of a soft one for the Scratch Perverts and was pleased to slip Beatdown, inspired by the Perverts hosted night at Fabric, into the CD player.

Beatdown: eclectic, knob on, pedal to the floor. This mix certainly isn't backwards in coming forward - there are 37 tracks throughout this 65 minute mix and as a result some great moments are pretty much guaranteed - the Martyn's Heartbeat Mix of Flying Lotus' 'Roberta Flack', for example.

Sadly they are just too few and far between and there is far too much that feels like it is only here because it is currently en vogue. As a whole it's a full on party style mix and Scratch Perverts have made much of the fact that they still play contemporary, current selections, boasting the fact that the mix is modern and has plenty of dub-step...

...So here is the thing: dub-step is whack music for lame-o middle-aged urban wannabees. That includes Burial. Oh, and whilst we are sacrificing the sacred cows of the late 'noughties': Zomby (who features on Beatdown) is shit too.

So ultimately what BlackPlastic is saying is it doesn't matter if the mixing is fab and the track listing 'current': if the tunes don't stack up, they don't stack up. Just because your genre of choice is British and involves breakbeats it doesn't make it any good.  BlackPlastic would take Hip-Hop Don't Stop any day.

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Available now - order on CD on Amazon.co.uk [affiliate link].