[Howie B.|Folk]尋找民謠歷險記

Artist：Howie B.
Album：Folk
Release Date：2001-09-04
Label：Polydor (UK)
Country：UK
Genre： Electronic
Style： Abstract, Trip Hop

Tracklisting:

1		Making Love On Your Side (4:56)
		Vocals - Marina Heredia
2		All This Means To Me (3:25)
		Vocals - Robbie Robertson
3		Musical Mayday (4:55)
		Vocals - Karmen Wijnberg , Will O'Donovan
4		Touch (3:40)
5		Duet (3:53)
		Vocals - Gavin Friday , Karmen Wijnberg
6		Watermelon Sugar (3:57)
7		Hey Jack (6:26)
8		My Wee Cod Piece (5:50)
9		Tap Dancer (5:07)
		Vocals - Will O'Donovan
10		Telephone (4:00)
		Vocals - Karmen Wijnberg

簡介。。。。。。

Howie B. was a popular London-based DJ and nascent studio hand prior to his move into full-time recording and production in the early '90s. Born in Glasgow, his association with Bristol club faves like Soul II Soul and Massive Attack fueled his aesthetic on a fusion of soul, hip-hop, house, jazz, and funk, first hazarded on early collaborative projects like Dobie and Nomad Soul. B. set up his own label, Pussyfoot, in 1994, already having released tracks under the his own name and Olde Scottish through noted outbound hip-hop imprints 2Kool and Mo'Wax, and a small-but-steady stream of material moving hip-hop instrumentals a step beyond the experimental joined Bernstein with beat junkies like DJ Shadow, U.N.K.L.E., Portishead, and Coldcut at the forefront of a U.K. breakbeat renaissance. Although his genre-spanning work with Skylab on 1994's #1 brought his talents for organized chaos before a wider audience, it was ultimately his role in the production chair for such artists as Tricky, Bjork, and, eventually, U2, that landed him a multi-album recording deal with Polydor which yielded LPs including 1996's Music for Babies, 1997's Turn the Dark Off and 1999's Snatch.

Folk, the album on which Howie B doesn't go for the electro gusto and channels his energy into outward bound gear, seeking the organic, the international, the mysterious, and the mental is a more curious affair than anything he's issued previously. Essentially, it is a slew of disparate stories from a musical burn case who keeps one of his personalities focused firmly on the mixing deck and the other fluidly appearing and disappearing in space -- outer and inner. Folk is still very much a human record, maybe even more so than Music for Babies or Turn the Dark Off, in that it is far more intimate. Fans of the cozy Howie B will dig the hell out of "Making Love on Your Side," the album's opening track, with it's glistening, noir-ish gypsy blues ambience, or the over-the-edge desperate love song with Robbie Robertson on "All This Means to Me." Here, as Roberston makes an actual attempt to sing his part, Howie goes for a greasy little trip-hop groove that is more smoky and seductive than in your face. But they're strange, too; there's a high-tech kind of eeriness at the heart of the mix that undoes itself and makes the protagonist come off as obsessive -- which he is. Proving that the Middle Eastern voices and the borrowed international themes are part of a bigger picture, B proves that he sees his role more as a guiding collaborator than as a solo artist. The Robertson track is one example, but it's stellar opposite is even more intriguing, a cover of David Essex's "Rock On" as a duet between ex-Virgin Prune Gavin Friday and new voice on the block Karmen Wiyjnberg. Wiyjnberg also makes an appearance on the dark, silvery funk of "Musical Mayday." This is a confusing little record to be sure, with its threads sticking out all over by the end, but it's also compelling enough to make you listen a dozen times just to see if you can nail it down.

我的碎碎唸。。。。。。評價指數：7.5/10
上大學的一段時間裏喜歡吹泡，這是那時喜歡的專輯之一。現在聼來，有一些hiphop的部分不喜歡，還是不錯的。尤其是充滿土著民族原始氣息的開篇曲Making Love On Your Side和個性另類的結尾曲Telephone，至今聼上去仍然喜愛。這兩個track都是女聲作品，最初以爲Howie B是一個團，後來才知道是一個男人而已。
去豆瓣上看看。。。。。。