There’s hardly anyone who wouldn’t just love it: fiddling with a few beats and choosing some matching EmCees to drop a few rhymes over it all. That’s exactly what Quakers is all about. Geoff Barrow, member of Portishead,7STU7, Portishead’s studio engineer and producer Katalyst have taken numerous samples and sounds and knitted them together to form this album. Then, colleagues and rappers like Dead Prez or Guilty Simpson put their parts on top of the tracks – all in all, more than 35 people are involved in the collective Qaukers. But, as tasty as the idea is – Quakers and Portishead have very little in common. This kind of depth can simply not be matched by the collective, even though tracks like »Outlaw« and »Jobless« have a faint idea of what it sounds like. But then again, it doesn’t need to sound like it – not, when the album has tracks like »Fitta Happier«, the album’s first single, up its sleeve. On it, winds slightly swipe one of Radiohead’s melodies, and Guilty Simpson adds a few lines on top of it. Unfortunately, the song doesn’t even last three minutes; and that’s basically the biggest problem of the album in general: even Madlib’s »Medicine Show« appears to be more coherent than Quakers. In 41 tracks, some things simply fall by the wayside. Some beats only appear as a sketch and then just fall flat. In addition, songs like »My Mantra« only tenaciously trots along its rhythm. Still, the album’s good moments outweigh the bad ones, like when Aloe Blacc shows that he can actually rap quite passably. And who wouldn’t have taken this chance to just try out a few new things? Just for trying out’s sake! With Quakers, that’s just doable.
Carmike
Comin’ At Yo Ass
Now-Again