Hermitude – Threads

Hermitude – Threads

Elefant Traks are killin’ it these days, with the success of The Herd breaking into the Top 20 (possibly even the Top 10, from memory) of the ARIA charts, a rare feat for local Hip Hop. One of their mainstays, Hermitude, have returned in 2008 with their third album, Threads, yet another sample of mostly instrumental pieces with a Hip Hop and world vibe.

For generally instrumental cats, they seem to have had a fair bit of success, touring overseas, supporting Aceyalone and Abstract Rude in a West Coast USA tour, while doing national tours in Oz. I’ve never personally been into these cats but their bio is rather impressive and encouraged me to delve deeper.

On Threads, the boys roped in a few of their mates for more featured vocals than their previous outings, including Jamaican reggae cat Luciano on the soulful ‘New People’, Koolism’s Hau on ‘Exhale’ (who comes average, as usual), and The Herd’s Urthboy on ‘Your Call’, who brings the heat as he generally does.

Musically, this album is pretty damn dope. It’ll probably appeal more to the muso types out there due to its complexity, but there’s some just simply great songs here. The dark ’44 Gallons’ is entrancing, the chilled out ‘The River’ is engrossing, the spaced out ‘Cartridge Kings’ is funky, the melodic ‘Frayed’ is the perfect winter soundtrack, while the odd ‘Stepping Stones’ is just damn cool.

Threads is actually a pretty bloody good album overall, and definitely worth the investment to hear some dope musicians bring it in a Hip Hop fashion.

(Elefant Traks/Inertia)

-Cee-For.