**** Genius/GZA LIQUID SWORDS (Geffen)
The real genius on this album
is producer the RZA -- the technical wizard, the boom and eerie swirl, behind
the Wu Tang phantasm, and also the author of a severely fried Jon Spencer Blues
Explosion remix. Liquid Swords is the culmination you could see coming
all along in the RZA's work with Wu Tang solo projects. The Method Man disc was
too stark; Ol' Dirty Bastard barely upstaged the RZA (and proved himself a
worthy successor to Lux Interior as the counterculture's wildest and wackiest
lyricist); and the Chief Raekwon album was an enjoyable near miss. On Liquid
Swords it's the abrasive textures that make the disc, including a snatch of
fuzzy guitar power that'll induce more head-bobbin' than the new AC/DC, not to
mention more dark Biblical imagery than in the whole Judas Priest catalogue.
Late in the album, the RZA unfolds a backdrop that frames rapper/lyricist
Genius/GZA's manic theology in a hazy techno-narcosis somewhere amid the loose,
under-recorded beats of Scorn, the spooky etherealisms of latter-day Gastr del
Sol, and Trent Reznor's moodier Downward Spiral moments. Granted, the
RZA probably doesn't listen to any of those guys, but you better believe
they're listening to him -- 'cause the electronic language of despair just got
itself a new poet laureate.
-- Carly Carioli
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