Uochi Toki: Libro audio (La Tempesta, 2009)

I'd be tempted to say that "Libro audio"'s by far the best Italian hip-hop ever, but as for every conceivable sentence about the album, the album itself immediately produces an incontrovertible deconstruction of it: the lyrics, the beats, the strain are so cynical and self-conscious that no sentence about it can be uttered without sounding pathetic.

(L'osservatore, l'osservatore 1)
Non mi interessano i contesti sociali da cui i gruppi musicali provengono
A meno che non si tratti di alieni, navi spaziali od antichi guerrieri più o meno medioevali
Ascolto solo i brani che ritengo evocativi
Non ascolto i gruppi solo perché mi dici che sono troppo fighi
Ho bisogno di nutrire sfere esistenziali che tu nemmeno concepisci
Cosa mi importa di sapere che questi e questi gruppi sono stati capostipiti?

(The observer, the observer 1)
I'm not interested in the social contexts of the musical groups
Unless it consists of aliens, starships or ancient - more or less medioeval - warriors
I only listen to the pieces I judge as evocative
I don't listen to bands just because you tell me they're cool
I need to feed emotional spheres you can't even conceive
Why should I care to know these and these bands are progenitors?

(Il nonno, il bisnonno)
Quattro generazioni più tardi io i suoi principi li ho conservati:
1) Quando c'è da pensare alle persone, Che Guevara va nel cestino;
2) Il fucile rivolto contro sé stessi può portare a vivere meglio

(The grandfather, the great-grandfather)
Four generations later, I've mantained his principles:
1) When you've got to think about people, Che Guevara can be thrown in the bin;
2) The rifle, aimed at yourself, can bring a better life.

You must imagine these words delivered in a metallic, conceited spoken-word style which can only marginally be labelled as "rap". It's rather some sort of ultra-wordy hip-hop free verse, throwing away any reverence for rhyme schemes to delve in a phonetic maze of bone-reduced sound/words, consonances, alliterations and dactylic stresses.
The lyrics are caustic, unreasonably literate but blazingly anti-intellectual; the beats are disharmonic, harsh and heavy, unkempt, anti-musical despite their perfect interaction with the words. "Libro audio" has nothing to do with anything else in the hip-hop field: it's individualist, misanthropist, proudly anti-metropolitan - it doesn't represent any subculture, but rather builds up lucidly characters and narrative flows in a prevailingly autobiographical way. It's a woodworm, a sore, a blister.

Uochi Toki are Napo (lyrics and vocals) and Rico (beats), from the surroundings of Alessandria. This is their fourth album.


Tracklist:

1. Il cinico
2. I mangiatori di patate
3. Il nonno, il bisnonno
4. Il ballerino
5. Il non-illuminato
6. L'osservatore, l'osservatore 1
7. Il ladro
8. Il piromane
9. Lo spadaccino
10. Il necromante
11. La bestia

Download (~230 kbps)