A-Diction – Walkin’ Alone Review

Breach & Boltz first released under A-Diction back in 2005 with their debut EP, To Be Announced. In what i’ve calculated as 2006 they started working on this album, Walkin’ Alone. Back then it probably had an obscure working title; now the title is settled upon and thrown up in big letters on the front of the CD cover, which features some excellent artwork by R. Lyons.

During all of that, Boltz managed to squeeze out a solo album titled The Wishlist, which was nothing to be sneezed at. A few ‘mixtapes’ (The Three Year Itch and In Good Company) were also had along the way, but the gold of the duos crop was being put aside and it features here on Walkin’ Alone.

I like to read album notes, do you? They’re always a fun affair, so to quote the album notes “yes, it’s too bright but the bottom of the snare sounds ok!”. To explain in more detail, listening through the album at around track 4 I started thinking quite a few tracks were just a little too sharp or bright, by track 6 I was reading the album notes and read that quote; I couldn’t have agreed more.

The intro to the CD I’d personally have not bothered with. It’s a beat by Whisper and I get the feeling it was a weaker beat that was either thrown together quickly or picked up from the trash pile of “not sure what to do with”. It basically consisted of what I describe as flat singing on a beat that didn’t suit anyone on it.

After the 3 minutes and 5 seconds of dissapointment the Intro brought my life, I was invited to take a walk. Walkin’ Alone is a beat by Lewis One, featuring Juice of Battlehoggs on the cuts. A hot beat, diced with raps about raps that all just works. With the chorus constantly hitting the line “lets take a walk” it really feels like this should’ve been the intro, inviting us into their world.

There’s a lot of listenable stuff for a while, but it’s all just raps about raps. M-Phazes comes in on One Fact with Doc Felix for cuts and it’s a nice beat, but the content on the lyrics doesn’t win gold stars. It’s not until about Wingman that we start to see actual content in the lyrics of the tracks. Unfortunately the overly bright vocals in Wingman kind of ruined it.

The lads (or their promo piece of paper) have gone and recommended Drop The Beat (Remix) as a radio player. The track features G-Force and Vida Sunshyne and I can see why it’s been recommended, it’s just a nice simple track, cleanly presented with a chick-hook; suck it up radio!

We really start to hear more content now, with the lyrics of What We Do presenting the life of the MC, I guess as these guys see it. A very enjoyable track, that you should definitely listen too with a tongue in your cheek. However I’d possibly have presented the next track Ladies and Gentlemen (basically a track about having a sense of humour) before it just for the context it could give to these lyrics.

The posse cut of the album, Capital Vices comes care of M-Phazes, with cuts from Mathmatics. It features Fraksha, Billy Bunks, Scott Burns, Whisper and Raven. Loosely themed by it’s titled, each MC presents bars on vices. It’s possibly a bit too slow, as only a few MCs actually sounded good on it. Following up from this posse cut, the tail end of the album gets pretty meaningful, with Just You, Unbalanced, Lost For Words & Hold On coming together to tie up the album nicely.

Should you buy this? sure. Will you like it? more than likely! Walkin’ Alone has a track or two for everybody, it’s not all meaningful and it’s not all bravado; It’s a little from column a and a little from column b. If you enjoy listening on good headphones the bright mix is going to annoy you, but it’s fair to say most people probably aren’t even going to notice.

Rolling on 3.5 stars, let down by the lack of consistency in the overall mix.  Brought to you by: Two, Five, Six and Thirteen.. recommended by the paper.