THE HERBALISER
VERY MERCENARY

Ninja Tune still keeps up the groove. Without this innovative label today's hip hop/funk/electronica scene certainly would have been less colourful. With founding act Coldcut as the prime mover, they have become something of a pacesetter through the years.
The Herbaliser cherishes the Ninja Tune-tradition very well. On their third album, "Very Mercenary", the focus is on a jazzy, sample driven hip hop at a thoroughly orchestrated level. The vocal tracks (featuring artists like Bahamadia, Roots Manuva and Dream Warriors) slightly reminds me of early Us3 or Gang Starr while the instrumental tracks, like "Goldrush" and "Moon Sequence", sometimes seem co-produced by a funkier John Barry. The orchestral touch, however, has nothing to do with the past year's epidemic crossbreeding of mainstream hip hop and classical music. The sampled strings on "Very Mercenary" are carefully chosen, and never a blasphemous violation on some famous classical composition.
The sometimes rather dark mood (like in the great "Who's the Realest"), also reminds me of the pre-millennium tension you find on UNKLE's "Psyence Fiction". "The Sensual Woman" includes very cool flute progressions and is with its erotic simplicity truly seductive. Despite lacking any obvious highlights, "Very Mercenary" shows that the intentions of The Herbaliser are to further develop the art of hip hop. And that is something most hip hop acts of today don't really bother to do.

ERIK ALMGREN