At the beginnimg of 2010, a music teacher from England made available for download an album he’d created that mixed vocal tracks by the Wu-Tang Clan with beats made from Beatles songs. That collection, Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers, created an instant buzz: for the concept, and for the great attention paid to blending the two sources, musically and thematically. Reviewers and musicians alike raved about the tracks, and the man behind the project, Tom Caruana, received quite a bit of attention and acclaim for his work.
Now, a year and a half later, Caruana has released a follow-up. This time however, it’s with the full support and assistance of Wu-Tang enterprises, who offered support (and some exclusive vocal tracks) for his new promo-only release Black Gold: Wu Tang And Jimi Hendrix.
Thankfully, it’s a more-than-worthy successor to Magical Mystery Chambers. The aforementioned exclusives fit well alongside radical reinterpretations of Wu-Tang classics, and Caruana’s production uses the Hendrix source material skilfully; the guitar riffs and drum fills of The Experience’s performances are broken down to their core components and reassembled into insanely funky new forms beneath the twisting lyrics. Unlike the Wu/Beatles album, which built tracks from numerous cover versions of Beatles songs (as well as their own recordings), the performances here are all Jimi, and it lends a uniform atmosphere to the proceedings that the other volume sometimes lacks. There’s plenty of fine detail that rewards close listening, and the twin sources often dovetail in truly sublime ways: Ghostface’s “Holla”, built on a vocal hook lifted from The Delfonics’ classic “La La Means I Love You”, gains new levels of depth as it plays out over Hendrix’s precisely controlled wah-wah riffs. Method Man’s blunted wordplay slides between the notes of “Mannish Boy”. Ghostface’s “Tooken Back” blends with “Angel” on lyrical and emotional levels, not just as a simple laying of vocal over music. Though it seems odd at first glance, the psychedelic expansiveness of Hendrix’s sound and Wu-Tang’s street-level narratives compliment each other perfectly; the fresh context sheds new light on sounds we’ve heard a million times before, and gives a new appreciation for two acts whose work has helped define the landscape of modern music.
Black Gold: Wu-Tang And Jimi Hendrix isn’t available in stores, but can be found in various locations on the internet– the Wu Blog isn’t a bad place to start looking.