Hawnay Troof
Dollar and Deed
Retard Disco/Valve


The double album is a difficult undertaking in music, as evidenced by the fact that for every 'White Album' or 'Being There', there is a counterpoint - something so hideously self indulgent it should barely be an EP, let alone something that comprises more music than can fit on a single LP or CD. 'Dollar and Deed' is very much in the latter camp: an unfortunate, sprawling mess of an album that provides so few highlights it beggars belief.

The ridiculously named Hawnay Troof is the rap project of one Vice Cooler - itself a psudeonymn for California based ultra-hip artist, photographer, author and musician Christiana Richards-Touchstone. The main problem here is very simple. Richards-Touchstone is a terrible, terrible rapper, to the degree that you would imagine it an invariably unrealisable goal for this album to have even seen release if not for his previously mentioned level of underground celebrity. He's a primary school level mix between Kid Rock and Adrock, but even more obnoxious than that sounds because there's little to no subtlety; it's like having someone shouting in your ear constantly.

And while his embracement of DIY ethics is admirable in some ways, it's also horribly misguided - the vast majority of the album is written, produced, mixed and performed by Richards-Touchstone, who quite simply lacks the ability to perform all of those tasks to the degree that one expects from a widely released product like this. It's made even more evident by the fact that the tracks put together with the help of others - especially those featuring hyperactive French pop duo Stereo Total - are occasionally actually passable.

They can't even come close to saving it, though, and overall it's such an abysmal failure of a record that you wish it had never have seen release past Richards-Touchstone's closest friends and toadies, if it did indeed need to be produced at all.

Alistair Wallis