I have to admit that I m always a bit suspicious when I see a new generic label pop up. Generally, such fusions don’t sit together particularly comfortably and feel more like a gimmick than a new musical adventure, something forced together rather than an organic creative process. But not this. Listening to this second album from C4C exploring this neat sonic fusion, you have to ask yourself, why hasn’t someone thought of this before?
Folk-Hop Vol. 2, like its predecessor, takes the lilting and delicate flows that you associate with folk music and wraps that sound around deft hip-hop beats. It’s a perfect merging and meeting of worlds, of the pastoral charms of the former with the more urban groove of the latter, the horizontal folk flow with the vertical bounce of the hip-hop rhythm.
Coffee Talk opens things up, drifting harmonicas and chilled guitar lines seeming to blow in from Neil Young country and a gentle, spacious beat providing understated energy. From there, tracks such as Chene play with a plaintive piano sound, Miss You is soft and symphonic and Grasslands echoes with a vaguely oriental vibe.
Although generally existing in very different sonic worlds, the underlying rhythms and the gentle guitar lines merge seamlessly. It is the sound of worlds colliding but, ironically, in doing so creating the most soothing and natural sound. A glorious album and a sound that others will be keen to emulate.
