Monday, September 7, 2009

Onra: Les Chinoiseries

French DJ/Producer Onra (who's of Vietnamese descent) took a trip to Southeast Asia and returned home to Paris with a bundle of old Vietnamese Pop records under his arm. The dust, crust and pops of old, worn wax shines through in a gorgeous way on his LP Les Chinoiseries. All the cuts are enjoyable and certainly head-nod worthy. "The Anthem" is one of the funkiest ass tracks I've heard in a long time (anywhere from a week or so to a year, you figure it out), with a horn section and strings lending each other a hand in a backbeat double dutch of delight. Meanwhile, speaking of funky tracks, after about 27 straight listens to "I Wanna Go Back", I just had to go drop the needle on some older J-Zone shakers. I love that, just like a cluster of capillaries blown up under the miscroscope, somehow you can find the most distant, string-thin connections through the HipHop SpaceTime Continuum. With ears like mine, you could say I'm the Stephen Hawking of the musical goldmine, the way I process sounds and beats and spit it back out with words so fine, I even make the moon happy enough to go shine when it's go time....
...Whoah, uh sorry, er, not really. I guess I just felt the HipHop spirit and had to let loose on a rhyme, just to illustrate how good this album makes me feel.

Also, does anybody else feel like the picture on the cover art almost looks like some dude pretending to be Bruce Lee with that pose?? I dunno why, but I just keep looking at it and seeing scenes from Enter the Dragon.

Score: 7/10

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