Reviews

Origin Myths – Joe Driscoll

Label: Buttercuts Records

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. If you’ve never heard of Brooklyn-born one-man rap ensemble, Joe Driscoll then its likely you’ve never heard of live-looping either, but sure as eggs is eggs there’s even a damned festival in Cambridge and one in Sweden celebrating this one darn thing. And here’s how it’s done: you get some digital repetition of some sounds you make using your voice, your guitar, your harmonica or your didgeridoo with the help of your bog-standard, buy-off-the-shelf Line6 Delay Modeler (with Loop Sampler) and you start multi-layering no end of wacky, soulful sounds live on stage. Of course, you have to have the ideas in the first place. It’s no use bouncing shit-off-shit and looping just any kind of improvisational bollocks which is why human beatboxer, singer, rapper, poet, guitarist, philosopher, ranter, Joe Driscoll hopped out of Brooklyn, New York and into the offices of the UK’s Buttercuts label syncing and threading all the deciduous threads of American Roots music with multi-modern fibres like Hip-Hop, Rap, Reggae and a vision strong. And should your ears alone fail to convince you here’s the proof: a Digital Versatile Disc showing who Joe Driscoll is, what he does and how he does it in addition to footage of legendary graff artist Snug One who is responsible for all Joe’s artwork.

Best of this beautifully layered bunch? The heavenly helium gospel of the final track, ‘Vision Strong’. Malcolm X meets Bobby McFerrin in Babylon.

Rhythm, Poetry and Rhyme. With no rehearsal.

Release: Joe Driscoll - Origin Myths
Review by:
Released: 28 October 2006