ARTFORM – SELECTED JOINTS (MAY 2011)

ARTFORM – SELECTED JOINTS (MAY 2011)
Well after doing the sleeves, recording mixing and mastering of the compilation I guess I will do the blog post as well. Selected Joints [May 2011] is a compilation of material recorded by Artform since the fall of 2007. This fourteen track mix-tape is the first vocal project to be released under seamrock entertainment other releases have purely been beat tapes. While there varying opinions regarding the release, with most of the members feeling that a launch should even be organized with aggressive marketing strategies in place, I personally felt that this were just tracks that had to given to the masses with little or no costs at all. The project was however well received by those who had been craving the Artform sound for the past years; most of the tracks are reminiscent of past years when the group was just taking its baby steps; in 07/08 they were getting regular airplay on local radio station shows such as “Rendezvous” hosted by none other than Deeva (to whom I still feel the group owes much for providing the platform), tracks like “open your mind “ , “you are not alone” and take care are just a few examples. The project opens and closes with quick compositions by cymptom who handled most production other producers (K10 , Sociovenomus , Ozee and Motalio) also make powerful statements with soulful impressions they leave on the compilation. The only guest features on the tape are Chabstone of rap –ill and Severe agony of Artform Affiliates, who respectively appear on “Grown Men” and “I wonder”. Artform affiliates also throws in a yesteryears number “It’s all love”, I personally still feel this is one of those tracks where fatal passed a subliminal “you can’t touch me” to the random rapper in Maseru at that time. Tracks similar to this are “Shine” and “Hustle”. “Down for whatever” supposedly produced by metal jacket for one of his compilations was also thrown into the project, this is where Queen Mo illustrates her Prowess and ability to kill sound different from those of her seamrock colleagues. There is also a blatantly raw vernacular joint “koli ea malla” where Fatal, Cymtom and Stradegy decide to rip it in their mother tounge balancing this thier orthodox boom bap conformist orientation, the joint samples ntate Letsema Mat’sela on the hook, humming episodes from the music indigenous men “Mokorotlo”. All other things aside it’s a fairly good project, for a first release it quite good a standard they should either live up to or surpass in the future.