Barter Boys - Doc Waffles x Goldzilla

http://docwaffles.bandcamp.com/album/barter-boys


Just when I thought I'd nearly had my year-end list of local albums completed, tallied and typed up...

Doc Waffles and Kwe (Goldzilla) come and up and heave my whole system off the desk, open the windows and turn up the stereo and start haggling me for a trade, a typewriter for a Hawaiian shirt... or pawning off a pair of white tigers, like what am I gonna do with those?

But these guys, they're just Warhol-enough to win me over with their sophisto-snark satires and pop-art articulations.





I've been waiting for Goldzilla to get another batch of raps out for a couple years; dude really spun my head with that album he put out with his DJ SomeKid (Paul Wilson). Every time I ran into him at a rap show, he'd remind me that he was still writing lyrics...but....strangely...whenever we started shooting the shit, the convo would always coast toward the subject of Doc Waffles...with the talented young lyricist intoning that it was Waffles who was his biggest inspiration...



...now...they're powers combined! With production by Jaws That Bite, Eddie Logix, Sheefy McFly, Pastel Arsenal, and Crate Digga.

Goldzilla x Doc Waffles bring you Barter Boys...an evolution for both of these quirky hip-hop commentators, fusing their unique sensibilities for dense verbiage suturing scenes of suburban ennui and pop-culture's disconcerting hollowing-out...along with indictments of idolatry for long-gone/half-forgotten basketball stars, moment-of-clarity-esque ruminations wrought between anti-climactic parties and underwhelming space explorations, splicing of self-referential mythologies mingling local icons like James Linck or anthems about Broncos with dome lights running all the time...

Indeed. Each rapper gets a couple of singular tracks to strut their surrealist stuff. Doc Waffles nearly breaks the mystical weirdo wonderland mold when he goes on his rant during "Rites of the Honey Vapor Princess..." Goldzilla, meanwhile, kills it on the punchy, swaggery "Da Vinci Code..." (wherein J. Walker illuminates us upon the versatile compatibility of tortillas).

That said, we should draw attention to the aural atmospherics melded by this supergroup of producers, embracing some fresh flairs of dark new-wave glam and spacey krautrock crypticism during the middle sections of this record with those eerie synthesizers and sparse percussion. Per usual (and, again, with an even more refined intricacy,) Doc and Kwesi are shrewdly cinching re-looped thematic lyrics and recurring locales to create an interlocking universe of imagery, iconography and lore.

"Illuminati Snacks?" "boats to ice-cream island...?" "...interesting spoofy commercials with satisfied customer testimonials?"

"Pass the jug... Barter Town / every single day is a holiday..."

http://docwaffles.bandcamp.com/album/barter-boys

The wordplay on "Look Who's Bartertown 2" alone.......