Here we go then, those Allergies boys with their seventh album in eight years – Freak The Speaker. Freak the speaker? They can freak my speakers any time they like – especially when they keep things as fresh as this! Well, they need to with that kind of release schedule, right? But anyway – what actually are they freakin’ your speakers with on the new one? Well, if you’ve been keeping your ear to the ground for the long pre-album release run of five singles though, you should already have a pretty good idea for this time, Matthew, The Allergies have mostly been doing three things – being their most generically adventurous yet, making their hip-hop more heavyweight and, of course, ensuring their party breakbeat signature sound gets a burnish too.
It was actually the genre experimentation angle that characterised first single Koliko back in April which found Ghanaiian rapper K.O.G. atop a decidedly Afrobeat-inflected dancefloor number. Given how much of a departure this was from anything previously by the duo, it was a brave move as, arguably, making it the LP opener was too. By way of a pre-emptive riposte to any complaints of being formulaic, it’s less a play safe ‘we can do this too but we’ll shove it towards the end of the LP in case it ruffles feathers,’ and rather more a, ‘we do what we like, when we like and where we like.’ In terms of single schedule release they then went with MC Dynamite vehicle of One More Time – a slower midtempo, soul-drenched manouevre more typical of their oeuvre but still hardly the pumping dancefloor party breaks you might have expected. Not so the LP which jumps straight from the most way-out track to arguably the sort of thing with which we’re most familiar – repurposing a late sixties soul hook and sampling the beat (not for the first time this year – hello X-Ray Ted!) of SSS International’s finest on Knock Me Off My Feet. Familiar sound it might be but it’s a certified banger too. By the time we reach track three however, we’re back to mirroring the single release schedule with third single – the Ohmega Watts-featuring No Flash – a heavyweight slab of late nineties style hip-hop and possibly the boys’ heaviest hip-hop cut to date.
What?! No Andy Cooper appearances? Of course there are Andy Cooper appearances – on possibly his heaviest Allergies beat to date (and another former single) – the LP’s title track – a paean to the making the loudest noise possible. There’s also time for some classic AC speed rap on the high speed Breakthrough and duetting with Marietta Smith on the more loose and funky dancefloor banger Somewhere To Be. Elsewhere, don’t forget to listen out for Roy and Adam’s best Digital Underground impression on the Humpty Dance-ish Watch What You Say and, of course, this one’s biggest and most accessible banger – current single and disco-breakin, block party fuelling Let me Hear You Say. Consider your speakers freaked!
(Out now on Jalapeno Records)