KILL THE VULTURES - Kill The Vultures

This love is dangerous indeed. Foretold massacres that repeat themselves, on Valentine's Day. It's hard to imagine an opening track more representative than "Lovin' You Dangerous" for an album that glides like some past-era gangster's car through a metropolis both grey, smoky and jagged at once. "Kill The Vultures", the first, self-titled chapter, is an album of rare intensity, a fresh take on white hip-hop: four guys from Minneapolis warping and mangling jazz, blues and rap.

It's too easy to say they blend genres together — these guys are consummate alchemists. The beat turns instrumental, lopsided and seasoned with horns, Mardi Gras stuff from New Orleans loaded with bile ready to explode; "Hidden Signal" is, forgive the overused term, a shard that pierces and bursts into your ears with a roar. But the rhythm is relentless, the scenery shifts quickly and turns elusive, drawing you into an imaginary club full of lit, smoking cigarettes, women with eyes like weapons and 9mm handbags — "The Vultures" is one of the songs of the year. A soft, seductive upright bass, briefly covered by metallic percussion, leads us into a sacred, slow and cadenced flow, a nihilistic, oppressive prayer that paints dark scenarios for the collective's own members. Nomi, Crescent Moon and Advizer's lyrics are pitch-black, a noir that for the first time comes wrapped in a retro hip-hop that has never sounded so new.

It's a return to origins in the lyrics, which regain their political and social connotations, going back to recounting everyday anxieties; "7-8-9" is the last defense of what they can't take from us: our dreams: "These dreams are mine, these dreams you can't have". The same goes for "Good Intentions", a twin in content but opposite in method: the former is an absurd blues-core gallop, the latter a super-slow outpouring of bass and horns, with an arsenal of words denouncing false ideologies and everyday abuses. Anatomy, the mastermind behind the productions, proves to be one of the most interesting figures on the scene, with dirty yet perfect sounds, retro flair and imagination in abundance.

Thirty-one minutes in all, a short album that still holds plenty of fury and elegance. This is perhaps what makes Kill The Vultures' offering so compelling: through this blend of styles, they've managed to give hip-hop new depth, an elegant and refined musical depth, conjuring up an urban imagery worthy of Sin City's shades of grey. "Sick Days Are Upon Us Now" and "Beasts Of Burden" are dirty, venomous urban regurgitations, syncopated and blazing as they repeat their rusty mantra, as if they truly came from another era.

But there's also room for a divertissement in "Howl n' Heal", where Jim Hall, McCoy Tyner and Elvis Jones might suddenly seem to appear playing over this backing track, the album's true jazz climax unfurling beneath the incessant vocal stream that runs through the whole record. And it closes with a seductive sampled trumpet that tries to hypnotize alongside percussion that's, for the first time, dry and sharply marked: "Behind These Eyes" is a song that, while keeping the album's overall sound, drifts slightly away from it, hinting at actual singing, in a stretched-out atmosphere that in some ways recalls certain cLOUDDEAD settings seen through a black-and-white filter, closing with a piano turn that wouldn't have been out of place at the Plugged Nickel some forty years ago…

Disorienting — that's what comes to mind after every listen; each time it's a different pleasure listening to one of the most fascinating and fresh albums of 2005. Keep it up.

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30/04/2026