The Shadow Cabal of the 8 Oligarchs – Hefe Heetroc (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

The mysterious and mercurial Hefe Heetroc is an interesting proposition. The music sits somewhere beyond conventional rap, past the point where glitchy electro starts to unravel into something more like the death throes of a misfiring super computer or half heard deep space noise. It is almost a deconstruction of the genre, or at least a strange musical anagram where nothing is where you expect it to be. Musical curve balls are the name of the game here.

Listening to the album is a weird counterpoint of annoyance at how it seems just on the edge of falling into chaos, and a hypnotic attraction as you try to predict where things will go next. Try but fail. But what ever you think of the music on purely aesthetic grounds, it is clear that something important here. In the same way that as hip-hop spawned rap it was seen as a lesser being, as punk dumbed down the rock and roll template it was seen as a step too far, The Shadow Cabal… will be seen as a revolutionary move and an evolutionary step. Its power may not come from commercial numbers or mainstream exposure but in many years time it will be seen as radical turn down a new musical pathway.

It may not make sense now, it doesn’t have to, its job is to sink into the underground consciousness, infect and subvert perceived wisdom and suggest new musical forms. Trailblazers are rarely seen for the visionaries they are until many years later but one day Hefe Heetroc will be the coolest name to drop as an avant garde music reference.