Abdominal & DJ Fase

The debut twelve-inch by Abdominal & DJ Fase is only the second release from the Cryptic Souls Crew to deliver on the potential they display in their live shows and on their past releases. The first CSC release to do so was DJ Serious's split twelve-inch with Asicks and D-Sisive, featuring Unknown Mizery (released on Headless Heroes). Like Serious' vinyl, Abs and Fase have found the chemistry to add the energy and soul that were rarely revealed on CSC releases but were aptly demonstrated on stage. "The Vinyl Frontier" is a spacey track about alien B-boys and our first contact with them - sort of like a Close Encounters of the Third Kind for the hip-hop nation, but without the potato mountains and with better keyboard music. The beat is good and Fase chooses a lot of great vocal samples to help flesh out the concept, but the song is about a minute or two too long, unfortunately, and slowly starts to lose the energy that sets it apart from past Abs releases. On the other hand, the B-side beat box extravaganza, "Fly Antics," is too short. Sounding like the rebirth of Doug E Fresh, human beat box Oral B is really the star of this track, especially when he busts into his Humpty Hump impression for a "sample." Ah, it reminds me of when DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince dropped "Human Video Game," the ode to their beat box, Ready Rock C. Let's hope we see more product from these two in the future - and I wouldn't mind hearing more from Oral B, either.