CD REVIEW: JOE RANSOM, FABRICLIVE 20

May 25, 2005 2:08 PM Genevieve Powers (Writer)

Hip-hop that holds you hostage
The opening sample congratulates listeners on buying their first turntables; the closer warns you “just how it really is in the industry.” A streetwise DJ bred on Bristol’s grimy beats, Joe Ransom invites the innocent and the jaded to this party but satisfies both by fusing the sundry sounds of London’s hip-hop landscape. You can practically see the schoolgirls double-dutching to Rodney P’s “The Nice Up,” but Ransom turns sharply down a darker alley with M.I.A.’s “Galang” and Dizzee Rascal’s “Stand Up Tall,” arriving at the gritty sound that makes Fabric Fridays worth the ransom.

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