Album Review: Pumpkin Head's Orange Moon Over Brooklyn

Its been awhile since I downloaded any underground hiphop, so when I got an Itunes gift certificate I took the opportunity to look up Pumpkinhead. You may be familiar with Pumpkinhead if you are a fan of Immortal Technique, he was on the tracks "Peruvian Cocaine" and "The Illest" and he impressed me, however I was never able to find any of his solo work before deciding to pony up some money to apple.  The Itunes page has 4 reviews giving the album 5 stars; one of said reviews compared this album to the 36 Chambers by The Wu-Tang Clan, and Madvillany by Madvillan a.k.a MF Doom.  With those types of comparisons I was obviously very excited to give this thing a spin, sadly I was a little let down. 

What impressed me about PH when he was making guest appearances on other albums, and on the only other song of his I owned was his upbeat and quick inventive rhymes. However the style of Marco Polo his DJ was very downbeat and slow which does not compliment PH's style.  Pumpkinhead just dosen't really shine in many of the tracks and I have a feeling its because the beats are so homogenous and  uninventive. This isn't to say all the songs are duds, here are the highlights:


Track 2: Authentic
 This beat is a little bit boring but it manages to keep your attention for the first half of the song and it at least uses some sounds uncommon to the rest of the album such as a xylophone, the rhymes are good but not great.

Track 3: I Just Wanna Rhyme
This song features sampling from Nas' One Mic which is one of the few samples on the album, If Marco Polo had replicated this approach and used some more samples to spice up his beats and create interest the album would have been much better.

Track 4: Trifactor
This song features Wordsworth and Supastition, generally as a rule any song on the album that brings in other rappers has the type of variety to keep you interested.  The beat has strings in it which help to create interest as well, however asthetically something about this song left a bad taste in my mouth.

Track 9: Swordfish
The beat on this song reminds me of something from Ong-Bak, it has a eastern type of feel this is probably my favorite track on the entire album.  The chorus features high speed rhymes that showcase some skill on PH's part.

Track 15: Anthem for the End of the World Featuring Jean-Grae
Another track with some sampling in it, this is a slow song but the lyrics are well thought out and serious in nature, the beat is a little more distinct than some of the others by Marco Polo but the rhymes are what make this worth a listen.   


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