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A new adventure in Moka Only’s never-ending musical journey, 'Vermilion' is The Durable Mammal’s eight effort in a fifteen years’ career span. Well, "new", the album is in fact a gathering of songs recorded in 2005, remixed and edited in 2006, brought to you by means of Canada’s prolific underground label Urbnet in 2007.
As always Moka hits us with his usual cocktail of creamery, dream-away, nod-your-head-slightly-from-front-to-back beats and lush raps about music, food and every small thing that covers joy and pleasure in a man’s everyday life. However, without remaining too optimistic, Moka Only stays critical and even cynical towards it all. 'Quit buying all the damn rap belogny, I’m scared of the youth, who can’t see through the phony' it goes in the eerie opening cut 'Do', while he sneers at his former label who got him some issues over the 'The Desired Effect' release in 'I Could Give A Fuck'; 'Nettwerk didn’t want a second round, word!, for reasons unknown, but you can take a wild guess, because I’m a wilder beast, cause I’m a mile threat, caus I’mma still release as often as I get…the urge' over a whining violin swirled around a hard-hittin snare and smoothed out bass-line.
In 'When…?' Moka chills on a cloud of nostalgia, reminiscing over the early days of his career, while the short interlude 'Banana Pancakes' illustrates the overall production sound of the album with a spacey electric Moogish touch to it. To stick with food; the piano-infected 'Ice Cream' inspires Moka to sharp and pensive lyrics; 'Fuck a hip-hop forum, better things don’t mean anything when there’s boredom, it’s like I don’t belong to nothing out there, three sandwiches short of a pick-nick, sort of'.
And that’s that, Moka has made yet another album that reaches a high level, not the best in a row (albums like 'Lowdown Suite' were above this), but close. Durability (they call him the Durable Mammal), cohesiveness and quality are the keywords to Torch’s extensive discography.
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