One of the monkey’s favourite hip-hop producers for time, Tom Caruana is the man behind multiple humungous mash-up LPs (including the Wu/ Beatles soundclash Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers and Wu/Hendrix effort Black Gold respectively) as well as original material such as 2017’s splendid Cinder Hill by Son Of Sam featuring live-played and recorded instrumentation and the superb Strange Planet – both featuring a host of quality MCs from both sides of the pond. Such are his skills and body of work of the last quarter century that when whispers of a new Caruana project start, you pretty much know it’ll be essential. And when you find out that it’s part of the Def Presse label’s partnership with KPM giving producers full access to the KPM library vaults, you discover yourself positively salivating. For such is Caruana’s latest long player which is so tasty he’s named it Salsa Verde in a nod to the series of green-sleeved KPM library LPs which form the sources to the samples he’s been chopping up for the music on it.
Turns out, TC’s been after these records for a significant part of his life and when Def Presse offered him the chance to have free access to the entire KPM back catalogue some years back it was a no-brainer to agree. A labour of love then, Salsa Verde‘s resulting eleven-track set is an absolute cracker of course and features over twenty MCs from (once again) both sides of the pond including such luminaries as Phill Most Chill, Dillon, Prince Po, Jehst, Large Professor, Dr Syntax and Boog Brown. The album is typical of Caruana’s oeuvre – i.e. largely in the mould of the late nineties/ early noughties boom-bap underground with the samples that inform his beats reflecting the late 60s/70s era of library music and soundtracks. The bassy woodwind on the minimal Jehst-featuring beat of Hits Hits Hits screams sixties mystery movie soundtrack for example while the piano led-sample on Ego Juice is redolent of 70s Euro-crime flicks. The MC-ing is as exemplary, as you’d expect, covering topics from dating (on former single Perfect Match featuring Large Pro and Tiye Phoenix) to the perils of disappearing up your own social media arse on the OTT tongue-in-cheek of Ego Juice featuring Big Ole Lil Young Blaise. Additional humour comes from various MCs conundrum about what to rhyme with ‘Caruana’ – U-George plumps for 60s/70s black icon ‘Lola Fulana’ while Dynas goes straight for the jugular and says what everyone was thinking anyway on the juggernaut that is Aisle 9 – “Caruana – sounds like…marijuana.” Certainly does! Stylistic outliers meanwhile include opener Baton which hits you like one with a double-speed beat featuring the triple emcee threat of Phill Most Chill (he might be chill but he doesn’t do ‘slow’!), Dillon and Kyza and Get It which provides late nineties hip-hop/ R&B vibes and features Maddy & Wordsmiff FLIP. In short this one’s a veritable feast for the ears.