Father Creeper

Album review

It's a notable shift, but the only thing one should read into Spoek Mathambo's jump from the funky and chic label BBE to the monolithic indie Sub Pop, is that the innovative African producer's music is highly desirable to all sorts of edgy tastemakers. Father Creeper sounds like an artist-driven, sophmore effort with little or no label interference. Spoek's own dark brand of African wonky pop incorporates dubstep, post-kwaito sounds, politically driven horror-hop, and even the rock-rap promise of Ice-T's Body Count delivered on the bang-your-head monster "Let Them Talk," little of this being the "hip" kind of fluff a jazzy marketing department would desire. It's the Last Poets-sized sense of duty that makes Spoek so compelling and his Diplo-styled sense of adventure that makes him so exciting, with drums destroying speakers, keyboards beaming down from the mothership, and woozy African chants all whizzing around this ominous album. As electro as it enters, it exits on an organic note as the closing "Grave" falls somewhere between Prince and Hendrix with a dramatic, wistful and starry-eyed finish that's like Rocky Horror from some African Guerilla theater. Thrilling, but this is also a sobering atrocity exhibition coming from the flip-side of hip-hop where gold and bling always means death and blood money. Sweet and sour are rarely at such odds and while the dark seems to be winning here, Spoek makes the "hard truths" sound like "real talk" while putting some of the world's most innovative rebel music underneath.

© David Jeffries /TiVo