P-Money: Big Things Instrumentals

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * *)

Given his profile as our premier turntablist, here's a timely double-disc in New Zealand music month. The first is the instrumental version of his gold-selling Big Things album, the second features new tracks recorded with New York artists and Tyna from Dubious Brothers, plus three remixes by local up and coming producers, and an unreleased version of a Big Things track.

Of the new tracks there's Aasim from Queens busting his rampant ego, melodramatically murderous attitude and especially nasty thoughts about your sister's anatomy over a crafty $2 string-section sample and simple beat on God with the Flow; the Crud Luv and Crime Fam crews from New York's Queensbridge bring in the ghetto drama over a worrying, repeated piano figure which nags like the theme from The Exorcist on the terrific Sixteens; and Tyna typically takes things seriously on My Choice which indicates the emotional, and possibly morally responsible, distance between Us and the US. The previously unreleased, lazier version of Big Things 1970s soulful trip of Sunshine featuring Scribe is a gem.

From Big Things, DJ Shan mixes up the Deceptikonz' track Touch Somethin'. Chris Macro of Dubious Brothers rehits Unique's braggadocio on Stay Dirty and Ali does the deed on Scribe 2001.

The instrumentals disc - with the basic tracks for Sixteens, God with the Flow and the floating Unique Will Get Ill added - allows a chance to hear the crispness of P-Money's beats and the sampling which has picked up awards and followers everywhere he's played. Does it work at home though? Indeed it does. With a few slightly tedious exceptions the stressless instrumentals act like dub plates, a new way of hearing the familiar.

On paper this is a career-stopgap maybe, but if so it's more valid than most rock bands' double live which usually serves a lesser and less illuminating purpose. Good'un.

Label: Kog