General Elektriks: Cliquety Kliqk
Quannum Projects

The offbeat hip-popedelia of General Elektriks' first album Cliquety Kliqk proves there's considerably more to hip-hop than gangsta violence, bling, and misogyny. A prototypical multi-channel beatbox artiste, Paris-born Hervé Salters enriches his playfully cubist take on the genre with a heavy smattering of space-age lounge flavour. Armed with a laptop, Shure SM57 mic, and an arsenal of vintage keyboards (Clavinet, Fender-Rhodes, Hammond , Wurlitzer, synths), he recorded his oddball head-nodders in Paris, Seattle and the Bay Area between 2000 and 2003. Quannum MC Lateef the Truth Speaker and mixmaster Chief XL join Salters for the soulful joyride “Facing That Void” while, egged on by a Clavinet's funky tickle and a slow and sexy groove, Lateef also drops smooth rhymes on “Take You out Tonight.” Salters includes his own sleepy vocals on “Frost on Your Sunglasses” and the lascivious lounge groover “Time to Undress.” Elsewhere, “Techno Kid” showcases an orgasmatron of fusiony synth warble and wah-wah beats while “Brain Collage” mixes rudimentary beats and voice samples to wild effect. While no one will mistake Cliquety Kliqk for Fear of a Black Planet, Salters' disc is definitely a refreshingly wacky deviation from the genre norm.

October 2005