lockdown : vinyl find #33.

As a French teenager during the 1990's, listening to IAM was kind of mandatory, especially if in need of rap music in your ears. Back then, they contested for the throne against Suprême NTM, and quite frankly it was a draw. The two groups responded to each other with classic albums and singles. The good ol' days... 

When the members started releasing solo albums, adopting the Wu-Tang Clan strategy, they took the market by storm. It started with Akhenaton, then DJ Kheops, Imhotep, Freeman, and finally Shurik'n, who was perhaps the most anticipated one but took his time. 

However, despite the commercial and artistic aura of the group, Imhotep chose his own road as a solo artist. He chose to explore the northern African sounds and to make beats with them. But more than just beats for rappers, Imhotep assembled geniune instrumental pieces, using samples, field recordings and live instrumentation. 

This CD helped me to understand that any audio material could be used to build hip-hop, and that hip-hop was the ultimate syncretic music genre. I could even have my dad listening to this record. It was unbelievable at the time. And I used it to fall asleep. 

So, as a newbie collector, I had to own it on vinyl. But it was expensive. Few copies were pressed and they were difficult to locate. It took me a while and a lot of disappointments to get one in good condition. Thanks to internet.

When I finally listened to it on black wax, I realized that the tracklist was different from the CD album. Which isn't much of a problem as the atmosphere is the same on both editions. Even, it makes owning the two editions relevant, as there are more tracks (mostly additional field recordings) on the CD. 

It's really a collage of sounds, small pieces to build a record-long puzzle, with a quality of sound that makes my day every time I listen to it. 

A masterpiece that I still love from cover to cover, from first to last track, twenty-ish years later.

Imhotep - Blue print.

 
Here's the album, as a playlist : YouTube.

I'm curious to know if there were any left-over tracks... May be worth doing a "Blue print rejects" project...