REVIEW: Urban Dance Squad, Persona Non Grata (Virgin)
- Tim Mohr
Amsterdam's Urban Dance Squad gained worldwide attention with the single "Deeper Shade of Soul" from their 1989 debut album, Mental Floss For The Globe. Despite a subsequently marginal response from U.S. record buyers, the band has continued to gain followers in Europe. Capitalizing on the European success of their second record, Life'n Perspectives Of A Genuine Crossover, Urban Dance Squad opened for U2 during 1993's summer-long Zooropa Tour.
Their latest album could easily bring back American listeners with its intensity and directness. Persona Non Grata was recorded in England and Philadelphia under the direction of Phil Nicolo and Stiff Johnson, best known for work of a similar bent with Cypress Hill and Fishbone. With the departure of DJ/scratcher DNA and the startlingly lean production, UDS sounds stripped down and tough.
As early innovators of cross-over music, melding hard-core and funk, UDS is, at least in Europe, canonized alongside the Beastie Boys and Red Hot Chili Peppers as among the greatest influences on the contemporary cross-over boom. Coinciding with the massive European success of Body Count and Rage Against The Machine, Europe has churned out a steady stream of quality cross- over acts. Clawfinger (Sweden), Whale (Sweden), Mr. Ed Jumps the Gun (Germany), Gum (Germany), H-blockx (Germany), No One Is Innocent (France), Sensor (England), and others have made Europe the center of the genre. UDS's early work in the field gives cross-over a European legitimacy that is lacking from music that is perceived as more openly immitative, witness the dearth of successful European hip-hop acts.
Still, UDS tips their hat to past American greats, acknowledging influences from both sides of the cross-over fence: nods to Henry Rollins and Suicidal Tendencies from hard-core, and numerous old-school rappers from the funk side. They also thank fellow cross-over innovators like Vernon Reid of Living Color, Ice-T, and the Beastie Boys. But UDS isn't quite that easy to categorize, as name-checks of Smashing Pumpkins, Dinosaur Jr., and XTC make clear.
Persona Non Grata leans toward the hard-core side of UDS influences. Aside from the rappy delivery of leader rudeboy, overt musical references to hip-hop are few and far between. Minus the DJ, UDS sounds similar to Rage Against the Machine - no samples, prominent riffs, and fast, catchy, live bass.
Opening the album is the terrific "demagogue." The song skates along on a skittish guitar/bass riff - definitely rocking but extremely tight, with jittery, staccato guitar flourishes in the tradition of great funky rhythm sections. "Good grief" and "no honestly!" continue, though with more sturdy metallic riffing. Rudeboy cuts across the beats, checking in and out, sometimes syncopating dancehall style.
The lyrics are quite strong, an engaging lyrical foodfight, with pop references, political and emotional pleas, and sing-along lines tossed all over the place. Best of all, rudeboy avoids dipping to the creative lows of Body Count and many other cross-over acts: he manages to fill an album with decent lyrics and great songs instead of resorting to shouting "motherfucker" as some kind of macho badge of rebelliousness used to divert attention from musical shortcomings.
The usual pitfall of cross-over albums is monotony. The Chili Peppers revert to weird joke songs and ballads; Body Count just gets boring. But just as Persona Non Grata reaches some threshold UDS deftly shifts gears - without relying on annoying novelties. The fourth song, "Alienated," is a slow, grinding psycho-blues workout riding a fat, fuzzed bass and guitars that are nearly indie-jangly. The next tune, "Candy Strip Exp," alternates fast verses with a molasses-chorus backed by slide guitar.
The record continues to invent new ways to express the same UDS style. Completely bare production allows the musicians to come right into your room - and they hold your attention once there. Songs evoke brief images of Black Sabbath, some of Eddie Van Halen's crazier early licks, firehose, and Jimi Hendrix while rudeboy skats and rants and raps and infuses the whole band with manic energy - but not generic anger or bothersome crotch-grabbing.
If you bought Mental Floss relisten to "Fast Lane" and "Say a Little Prayer For My Demo" to get a rough idea how Persona Non Grata sounds. If not, just picture a cross-over band that brings everything together in each track, and doesn't cause boredom after a few minutes. UDS seamlessly incorporates various tastes and influences on every song - but does so with nothing more than musical ingenuity and without any studio tricks. Like Rage Against The Machine, Urban Dance Squad can afford to dispense with elaborate production and varied instrumentation because of the freshness and originality they bring to their instruments and songs from the start.
