You may know Geko from the ‘We are Animals’ EP with Raven, or from his guest spots on various Hungry Human and Crate Cartel releases. If you don’t know, wake the fuck up. Hitting us with his debut full length release, we see 18 self produced tracks where Gex brings his unique style to not only the mic but the boards.

Creating a sound for himself that floats between dark and moody such as ‘The Rain’ which sees dope use of strings and deep horns over snappy snares to the more upbeat ‘The Blood’ featuring Luke Mac, Geko has production covered. There is a diversity here that people will like; Geko has a pretty punchy aggressive delivery that is balanced out by the slick production. There is something in each beat that will catch your ear and have you listening again to try to pin point it each time. Gex flexes his production depth on three instrumental tracks aptly title ‘One’, ‘Two’ and ‘Three’ which are each different but all excellent. From massive layered sounds such as ‘No Match’, to the simpler loops of ‘Hit the Floor’, if you can’t feel this, then stop listening to hip hop.

If there is one thing our country has over others when it comes to producers who emcee, most of ours can actually rap. Geko is no exception to this, his lyrics, delivery and flow comes just as on point as his beats. An aggressive flow that hits hard combined with lyrics that reflect his up bringing and lifestyle, Geko pulls no punches as he is joined by Raven, Sesh 1, Fluent Form and Luke Mac. There is a definite lyricism tip flowing throughout the album with many multis, metaphors and structures that will impress most wordsmiths out there whilst not alienating those who just wanna here a good flow as highlighted from the kick off on ‘My Time Pt 1’; “So don’t push the pacifist that push the pencil through it’s paces”. Ranging from straight battle spits, tales from the street, to the rise of Geko himself through life we see a lot of passion thrown into a unique style that Gek rips consistently.

This is how a self produced album should sound. It has a continually developing sound base that Geko brings when his producer cap is on but it is more importantly matched when the emcee hat is on. Whether spitting or mixing Geko brings heat and The Crate Cartel is a great example of a label that has already released high quality albums and will seemingly continue to do so.

By Gareth M

Geko- The Crate Cartle is availble now from all good Aussie Hip Hop is sold or via myspace.com/cratecartel

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 8:21 am and is filed under Album Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.