- DJ's Beni G and Go make up the Mixologists - a highly skilled turntablist duo from the UK and have a few titles to their name - the most recent being the winners of the UK 2001 DMC team battle and runners up in the world final of the same year. Representing for DMC's Champion Sounds, the Mixologists have cooked up a tasty mix, consisting of a healthy selection of hip hop, urban grooves and moving into drum'n'bass.
To demonstrate their arsenal, the Mixologists cut and scratch on top of a Plus One beat before moving into Da Rockwilder by one of hip hop's favourite tag teams, Method Man and Redman. Ms Dynamite represents for the urban crowd on Put Him Out laying down a ragga flow. Un-Cut's Skin 2 Skin has a definite Neptunes influence to the production especially with the heavy use of percussion and funky bass.
Arrest The President by Raw Dog has a nice UK hip hop feel to it - heavily syncopated beats, almost on a 2-step vibe, and techy bass - and features the vocal stylings of Taskforce and Braintax on a political tip - giving up the righteous middle finger to the dubya!
Lifted from the brilliant Original Pirate Material is Same Old Thing by The Streets. Mixed in perfectly with Loose Lips hitting the snare drum beats on syncopation - tight production and rhymes make you wonder why commercial radio seems to force garbage down your throat than get the real urban music into you!
Spit features beatboxing by the UK's best beatboxer, Killa Kela, the MC vocals of MC Trip and the scratching talents of the Mixologists - the posse being known collectively as Spitkingdom and Spit is on one a real jump, hands in the air tip, while interestingly enough keeping things minimal.
Before the tempo double times to 160+ bpms, Mixologists move the mix into reggae with Murderer, an exclusive tune by Skitz alongside Deadly Hunta and they cross the Atlantic for Sean Paul on Infiltrate- if you can stand the latter's rantings on the r&b tunes he's appeared on then Infiltrate will please, personally...
To kick off the drum'n'bass section is DJ Hype on the old skool jungle flavoured Coming In Good - ragga vocal samples and an old skool jungle bass line, bringing it back to 94. DJ Skitz and MC's Dynamite and GQ represented for the hip hop and drum'n'bass fraternities with We Make Them Make Noise on Plus One's previous Champion Sounds effort, this time around, DJ Clipz transforms it into a drum'n'bass tune for the jungle heads, right before Adam F and M.O.P. command you all to Stand Clear before ending off the mix.
Overall a decent mix of hip hop, urban, reggae and drum'n'bass tunes. Hardly any weak tracks on this one, however, what gets me is that Plus One was able to pull off a double CD volume, whereas the Mixologists were only able to come up with one. Perhaps Plus One just exhausted all the UK hip hop tracks leaving the mixologists with none to use! Rumour has it that the Mixologists are planning to visit Aussie shores in the coming months, so it would be nice to see their scratching skills done live!