Missing in Action - Cannibal Ox

Missing in Action could be a semi-regular feature......

Now and again an artist seems to drift from your consciousness due to being absent for a period of time, and you’re shocked when you happen upon their music and think “how could I have forgotten about them?” In the age of MP3 players, Spotify and suchlike, the digital “record collections” that listeners have are so vast that you could go a significant period of time without hearing a particular singer or band.

I was shaken out of an iPod reverie recently by the atonal horn intro to “Iron Galaxy” by Cannibal Ox. The dark rhymes and grimy lo-fi beats were in stark contrast to the glorious sunshine of that particular day, but I was drawn into the dark New York underbelly thanks to the unique skills of Vast Aire:

“I've got that Eve's Bayou sense of touch

So I fought, to touch every hand of a fan to read their thoughts

Battered wives, molested children

Roaches on the floor, rats in the ceiling

Cats walk around New York with two fillin's

One is in their mouth the other, does the killin'”

It’s been almost ten years since Vast Aire and his partner Vordul Megilah (interesting MC names, much more inspired that the usual), with the help of producer EL-P and guests, released The Cold Vein, and there’s absolutely no sign of a follow-up. No confirmation of a break-up, or whether it’s an extended Fugazi-style hiatus (another contender for MIA at a later date) and very little solo output from either rapper.

In 2001, when the top selling albums of the year included gems from Linkin Park, Shaggy and Staind, and one of the top five Billboard sellers was A Day Without Rain by Enya. In comparison, Cannibal Ox were positively revolutionaries.

Joking aside, this was something quite revolutionary in the hip hop world. With only the Wu-Tang Clan offering anything different to the big-pimping stylings of Snoop Dogg, Notorious BIG et al, Can-Ox were truly unique.

Even the source of their samples proved this crew were thinking outside of the box. Across The Cold Vein’s gargantuan 75mins running time we can hear snippets of new wavers Wall of Voodoo, Giorgio Moroder, Philip Glass, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson and Jaco Pastorious. This was a hip hop album like no other – its centrepiece and meisterwerk was “The F-Word’, a rap about unrequited love for goodness sakes! The F-word in question was in fact “friend”.

The virtuoso rapping of Vast and Vordul was quite something, and married to the wondrous production skills of El-P – he created crackling beats which battled against the lush samples and analogue synth drones – it created an album that’s rarely been bettered in the ten years since. You can hear that pain of the two MC’s throughout the record and it’s hardly a surprise that they’ve struggled to make music thereafter.

In the world of hip hop only El-P’s own crew Company Flow, –thanks to 1997's Funcrusher Plus - the disparate entities of Anitcon and the unrivalled Anti-Pop Consortium have pushed the boundaries of what the genre could really achieve. It’s galling to think that dross from the Young Money label dominates the scene right now. Perhaps The Cold Vein came ten years too early....we could do with another Cannibal Ox right now to shake things up.