TIME ZONE – WORLD DESTRUCTION (CELLULOID RECORDS)
When this song was used as the opening track to season four of The Sopranos it was placed perfectly. As Tony walked down his driveway in his bathrobe to collect his newspaper post 9/11 it just felt like the perfect statement of the times.
For years Time Zone felt like the great lost track. A video of the song exists, which is indeed the first time and place I heard it, but seldom does it appear on MTV. Sometimes I felt that I had imagined the song – a hip hop track from the early eighties with a full strength John Lydon spitting over it. Had the rap/punk crossover happened years before I had realised?
Arriving shortly before the Run DMC/Aerosmith crossover this is often credited as being the first rock and hip hop crossover and it was all downhill from here. This is a truly towering song, one that defined the age and pushed a message too heavy for mass consumption. This was the nuclear age.
Produced by Bill Laswell (Material) the pairing of Afrika Bambaataa and John Lydon was a righteous idea, two major heavyweights from the first generation of the most exciting music movements of their era combining respective gifts and processing so much power in the despatch.
Born in 1984 it is frightening to consider the age of this song now but incredibly pleasing and satisfying to note that it has aged very well, managing to remain sounding fresh and relevant. This was the fruition of true innovation from the hands of experts.
Immediately from the beginning it packs one hell of a thump as the Zulu chant exchanges blows with the punk oik squall running in tandem with some kind of mutated harmony. The words being spat out are rapid fire, as the song bridges you are relieved because as a listener you are finding you require a breather yourself. Listened to now around a quarter of a century later the lyrics are genuinely cutting, repeatedly hitting the nail on the head in the most accurate of measures, it almost feels like the Nostradamus of alternative of music. Perhaps we were always doomed from the start.
This record still requires elevation.
Thesaurus moment: source.
Time Zone
Celluloid Records
When this song was used as the opening track to season four of The Sopranos it was placed perfectly. As Tony walked down his driveway in his bathrobe to collect his newspaper post 9/11 it just felt like the perfect statement of the times.
For years Time Zone felt like the great lost track. A video of the song exists, which is indeed the first time and place I heard it, but seldom does it appear on MTV. Sometimes I felt that I had imagined the song – a hip hop track from the early eighties with a full strength John Lydon spitting over it. Had the rap/punk crossover happened years before I had realised?
Arriving shortly before the Run DMC/Aerosmith crossover this is often credited as being the first rock and hip hop crossover and it was all downhill from here. This is a truly towering song, one that defined the age and pushed a message too heavy for mass consumption. This was the nuclear age.
Produced by Bill Laswell (Material) the pairing of Afrika Bambaataa and John Lydon was a righteous idea, two major heavyweights from the first generation of the most exciting music movements of their era combining respective gifts and processing so much power in the despatch.
Born in 1984 it is frightening to consider the age of this song now but incredibly pleasing and satisfying to note that it has aged very well, managing to remain sounding fresh and relevant. This was the fruition of true innovation from the hands of experts.
Immediately from the beginning it packs one hell of a thump as the Zulu chant exchanges blows with the punk oik squall running in tandem with some kind of mutated harmony. The words being spat out are rapid fire, as the song bridges you are relieved because as a listener you are finding you require a breather yourself. Listened to now around a quarter of a century later the lyrics are genuinely cutting, repeatedly hitting the nail on the head in the most accurate of measures, it almost feels like the Nostradamus of alternative of music. Perhaps we were always doomed from the start.
This record still requires elevation.
Thesaurus moment: source.
Time Zone
Celluloid Records
No comments:
Post a Comment