Various Artists
Trampled: The Elefant Traks Remix Album
Inertia


The Herd has been a staple in the Australian hip-hop diet for over ten years. Not only have they provided the genre with some of the most innovative and breakthrough hip-hop tracks, but also produced and supported some of Australian hip-hop's figureheads including Mnemonic Ascent, TZU and Hermitude through their own record label Elefant Traks.

This album celebrates not only the success of The Herd, but also the enormous influence that Elefant Traks has had on the Australian hip-hop scene for the last eight years. The album also showcases some of Australia's premier hip-hop acts and urban beat makers including Curse Ov Dialect, TZU, Plutonic Lab and Monkey Marc.

As expected, the album features a bevy of pure hip-hop tracks, including Curse Ov Dialect's remix of The Herd's No Disclaimers, the Sulo remix of Ray Of Sun, a funked up Yerock remix of Keep It Relevant and perhaps the most impressive track of the album, TZU's politically-charged Recoil given a brand new thumping bass line and ground-shaking beat by The Herd's Traksewt.

But when the remixes stray away from the hip-hop stream, the album unfortunately seems to loose its footing. Count Bounce's remix of Urthboy's Last Chance is guitar heavy and at times comes across as a disjointed mash; The Herd's Apocalypta is given a B-grade grimey effort from Monkey Marc; Mikelangelo & The Black Sea Gentlemen's A Formidable Marinade stands out for the wrong reasons and shouldn't have been included in the first place; and Tunng's remix of the classic I Was Only 19 is just plain wrong (complete with heavily vocoded vocals and a crow being sampled throughout the track).

There is no doubt that The Herd and Elefant Traks will continue to provide sumptuous beats and stand out in hip-hop in years to come and this remix album seems to be at first glance at an innovative way to mark their milestone. But, after listening to this album, I am left wondering whether or not this remix album was the most appropriate way to celebrate their successes.

Leo Varona