Up and coming hip hop funkster heavyweights, Fold, are starting to make waves out of their Leeds stronghold and upcoming single, Oil Powered Machine, only adds to what has started to look like a very solid series of new material releases. It builds on their last double A-side single release, Be Water My Friend, featuring a Bruce Lee speech, which hit the download buttons back in July 2014, and once again features samples from some of the most iconic speakers in history, overlaid and intermingled with some impressive trip-hop mixes.
Set for release on the 1st December 2014, the new single will be available on digital download and as a limited edition, hand numbered 7″ vinyl. Like Be Water My Friend, it will also be a double A-side installment from the band, combining up with the ferocious excellence of Detroit Red (listen to the stream below).
This time around the speakers are Malcolm X and Michael Ruppert and the band have been emphatic in their focus on the importance of the speeches that have taken centre stage in the two new tracks that make up the single release. On Oil Powered Machine Ruppert’s speech on the the dependency of industrial agriculture upon fossil fuels hints at his wider insight into his geopolitical summations on the finite resources available to humanity.
It’s a building, layered track that flows up alongside the speech with funk guitar melodies and a crunching over-driven electric guitar-fueled mid section. It’s a short, sharp slab of funked-up trip hop deep thinking and it acts as a pretty poignant reminder about the sheer weight of the carbon footprint and resource intensity of everything that we consume.
For anyone that isn’t aware of Mike Ruppert, he was a wonderfully outspoken investigative journalist and author, who used his work to explore and expose the geopolitical theatre that underpins the fabric of modern society. The central theme in his writing and speeches is based largely on Hubbert’s peak theory, asserting that our economic system is predicated on infinite growth in a world of finite resources, and as a result of this equation the collapse of industrial civilisation is inevitable unless we dramatically change the way the world works.
The second track on the double A-side single, Detroit Red features the words of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, also known as Malcolm X, as he talks about liberty and fraternity in the United States. It’s a blast of a track with a lot of pace, direction and purpose. It’s brilliantly constructed around the speech, almost like the speech was made with the music playing the background. The synth string blasts are epic and as with both tracks there’s a punchy flurry of drum beats running through it to deliver the foundations of the track.
The title comes from the nickname Malcom X had as a hustler in Harlem before he served 7 years in prison during which he rehabilitated and re-educated himself before going on to be the African American leader, activist and speaker that he was. Like Oil Powered Machine it acts as a significant reminder of the need for change, for continuous improvement, for society and music to be reminded of the past, understand the realities of the present and reconstruct the future.
Inspired and influenced by Public Enemy the tracks have been recorded with the band playing together live, so it’s pretty impressive how tight and crafted it all sounds. In Oil Powered Machine and Detroit Red Fold continue to create infectious and thoughtful, downtempo releases that blur the lines between hip hop, electronica, rock, pop, soul, funk and R&B, and you can’t help but love them for it. Check out the second track from the single release below to listen for yourself and you can also read our review of Two Past Midnight to listen to more of their new material.
Fold Oil Powered Machine review: 4/5
