Ironweed Project - Dust Bowl
The first song starts with a repetitive guitar line. A husky voice does that slightly rhythmic way of speaking that’s neither talking nor singing. ‘Now I moved from Mississippi in about 1943’. Even though he’s husky he probably isn’t that old. If he is, he’s on the hipper side of maturity for digging all the genres he merges together.
That is assuming the voice belongs to Aniff Akinola, AKA Ironweed, who gave his nickname to the group. God knows where he is on the album if it doesn’t; he may be one of the other voices singing or doing the spoken intros or just on the other side of the microphone working on the arrangements and production that delicately balance old delta blues with hip hop.
The songs aren’t about wakin’ up dis mornin’ and women doin’ him wrong and hip hop is an all-terrain moniker for experiments in sampling, beats and experimenting.
When you press play and ‘Down To My Grave’ starts up you might think you’re in familiar territory. It sounds like something Robert Johnson might have covered. After a few seconds though, a drum machine kicks in. By the fourth track ‘All By Myself’ it’s a woman singing with the drum machine at full pelt. You might hear licks and say ‘isn’t this from…’ or ‘Doesn’t this sound like…’ but you can’t define the whole album.
The alchemy of so many ideas mixed together captivates you to an unusual degree the first time you listen to it. The next time round, when you know what’s coming next, it loses a lot because it’s not daring enough to be as good as it’s billed. The thing about hip hop alchemists, beat droppers and dance floor redefiners is that they’re prone to believing their own myths before they’ve established them. Akinola riffs off seemingly every music movement since people Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. Without his own trademark to riff off though, it doesn’t stick and the album’s plusses dissolve in an ocean of experimentation.
Expect the unexpected. This sounds like no one Akinola name checks • George Clinton, the Stone Roses or the Fun Lovin’ Criminals • or pretty much anyone else. This is original and a good mix of different moods and sounds but the first and fourth tracks are the only bits that are more than the sum of its incongruous parts.