LINEAGE "De Aqui Y De Alla" (Tuff Paddies) seven / ten

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Kerry - known for its mountains, its maidens, and its butter. But not its hiphop. Not at all.

While most of the Irish hiphop militia seem to follow the insular approach of regurgitating already exhausted themes, Kerry's Lineage crew are attacking things from a different angle, mixing living instrumentation with Rza/Primo influenced production. While this multi-cultural melting point idea has been explored heaps of times in the past, thankfully Lineage haven't allowed concept to compromise quality.

Curiously, the rhymes are kicked in both English and Spanish respectively by emcees Alex and Miguel, but since I'm a mono-lingual critic, I only knew what they were talking about half the time. Miguel certainly rocks a sweet flow Espagnol, and Alex is unmistakingly Kerry-bred in his delivery - sometimes to the point where he tends to sound more like an over-enthusiastic farmer lamenting the days of yore, but it's a style that grows on you.

All shouting aside, the rhymes are pretty on-point and the sharp vocal cuts provided by DJ Jus-Me add another welcome narrative to proceedings (peep his melodic violin scratches on the opening track... good shit).

The beats are solid, well produced head-nodding bangers, although over the course of an entire album, the grimey boombap aesthetic stays too rigid and questionable sequencing results in a couple of tracks sounding too similar in both style and content. The lads do experiment with different ideas - the tracks with James Kennedy on bass and Treasa Galvin on vocals work well - but there's some extremely suspect singing on certain choruses that suggest that some collaborations are best left on the cutting-room floor. That said, the multi-syllabic verse by guest MC Maverick Sabre on Cambia Tu Fortuna is expertly delivered and definitely adds a layer of lyrical weight to proceedings.

The lads can be proud of the work they've put into delivering this album, but the next album will demand more determined steps into unpredictable experimentation if things are to stay fresh.

John Lillis
www.myspace.com/thelineagekrew

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