Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein

mos dan

fact music
just wanted to show a bit of love for this, i've been going through a phase of rinsing it again. six years old and still as now as ever.

it doesn't look like it will ever be repeated or followed up either, sadly.

i remember reading an awesome review of it in the nme (of all things) when it came out, pointing out that the staccato rhythm of the line "it's like 'little.' 'black.' 'girl.' 'got.' 'shot.'" was meant to sound like a headline on a newspaper billboard.

as an aside, can you imagine the nme devoting 600 words to a debut album by some relative unknowns on def jux these days? ha.
 
still the seminal post-9/11 all-things coming to end album...recorded before 9/11 of course.



Pigeon and Scream Phoenix still make me watery...

and no one has come close to matching Vast Aire here since...

My mother said, "You sucked my pussy when you came out
Don't ever talk back
I handed ya life and I'll snatch it back"
I'm just a latch key kid with a snotty nose
High school drop out
Space, I'm around me whiteout
And I ain't dealin with no minimum wage
I'd rather construct rhymes on a minimum page
Cynical ways, cats sin for nickels these days
Pulling the chrome out
And you actin like pullin the chrome out...
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I've not listened to this for several years but this was a fucking beast of an album, the only def jux album that really really worked... it was so intelligently constructed too, with some of the rhyme/sonics interactions being unusually allusive... eminently quotable (well Vast Aire's lines anyway). Also unlike a lot of stuff in this sub genre the beats were frequently infected with a touch of the post-Timbalands, rather than just a hazy boom bap... I think it worked because it maintained more of a connection to hip hop "proper" than a lot of stuff in this field, without lapsing into back to '88 retro-orthodoxy... finely balanced between keeping it "real" and some kind of psychedelic street music... totally infected at a cellular level with the streets, the projects, in a surreal manner... men and towers jutting out against a brutalised landscape... Numerology and comic books and religious allegory flowing beneath the surface... a dead world animated with mythic grandeur...

"Pigeon", "Iron Galaxy" ("that chalky outline on the ground's a father figure? so he steps to the next stencil...", damn!) That sinister mocking/sardonic warped doo wop vibe on "Painkillers"... the whole thing felt absolutely epochal, that's true, in that long hot summer of 2001...
 
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Yeah, disgusting album; the production on early Def Jux shit was really heavy.
Venemous snakes out the congo...

Shame, the descent to what def jux is these days.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
i remember reading an awesome review of it in the nme (of all things) when it came out, pointing out that the staccato rhythm of the line "it's like 'little.' 'black.' 'girl.' 'got.' 'shot.'" was meant to sound like a headline on a newspaper billboard.

as an aside, can you imagine the nme devoting 600 words to a debut album by some relative unknowns on def jux these days?

This was the peak of NMEs "not-having-a-fucking-clue-what-to-do" post-britpop era... Destiny's child and Godspeed You Black Emperor on near consecutive covers!?! Regular UK garage articles...
 

tom pr

Well-known member
Have any of you heard the latest Aesop Rock? it's alright, not incredible or anything, but there's a real subdued, casual feel to it- like the prime Def Jux stuff happened, and did what it had to do (I know that it's easy to go back and slag the label now, but in 2001/02 they were putting out great record after great record), and now it's time to move on. It makes me like it more, because it feels like a really appropriate end to the label’s lineage- while El-P is still trying to force the apocalypse, the label’s biggest name seems to have distanced himself from the whole thing.

But yeah, the Cold Vein. I literally listened to tracks from that thing every day for my entire second year of sixth form, always noticing new little meanings in Vast Aire’s lyrics. How did he never do anything of note after that?
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Have any of you heard the latest Aesop Rock? it's alright, not incredible or anything, but there's a real subdued, casual feel to it- like the prime Def Jux stuff happened, and did what it had to do (I know that it's easy to go back and slag the label now, but in 2001/02 they were putting out great record after great record), and now it's time to move on. It makes me like it more, because it feels like a really appropriate end to the label’s lineage- while El-P is still trying to force the apocalypse, the label’s biggest name seems to have distanced himself from the whole thing.

But yeah, the Cold Vein. I literally listened to tracks from that thing every day for my entire second year of sixth form, always noticing new little meanings in Vast Aire’s lyrics. How did he never do anything of note after that?

I don't know! Even El-P (given that producers tend to be more long lasting in hip hop than MCs as a rule) failed to come up with anything as awesome (asides from "Step Father Factory" which is probably the peak of his production aesthetic, all post-Timba spaz beats and wrought iron industrial chords... about as overwhelmingly grandiose as hip hop can get... and FOR ONCE a coherent lyrical theme rather than a dictionary spewing mess...).
 

mos dan

fact music
I've not listened to this for several years but this was a fucking beast of an album, the only def jux album that really really worked... it was so intelligently constructed too, with some of the rhyme/sonics interactions being unusually allusive... eminently quotable (well Vast Aire's lines anyway). Also unlike a lot of stuff in this sub genre the beats were frequently infected with a touch of the post-Timbalands, rather than just a hazy boom bap... I think it worked because it maintained more of a connection to hip hop "proper" than a lot of stuff in this field, without lapsing into back to '88 retro-orthodoxy... finely balanced between keeping it "real" and some kind of psychedelic street music... totally infected at a cellular level with the streets, the projects, in a surreal manner... men and towers jutting out against a brutalised landscape... Numerology and comic books and religious allegory flowing beneath the surface... a dead world animated with mythic grandeur...

"Pigeon", "Iron Galaxy" ("that chalky outline on the ground's a father figure? so he steps to the next stencil...", damn!) That sinister mocking/sardonic warped doo wop vibe on "Painkillers"... the whole thing felt absolutely epochal, that's true, in that long hot summer of 2001...

spot on. and that stencil line gets me every time. gotta give props to el-p for the beats too - the instros cd stands up on its own.

[o/t that nme era was crazy, you're right. gybe on the cover.. that was fucked.]

i have a can ox 'fuck five, i want a hundred and eight mics' t-shirt incidentally. it's faded but still gets wheeled out now and then.
 

mos dan

fact music
all of this:

"Lets talk in laymen terms
Rotten apples and big worms
Early birds and poachers
New York is evil at its core,
so those who have more than them
Prepare to be vic-tims
Ate up by vultures, the politicians
In a dog eat dog culture, that'll sick 'em
Lack of mineral, we take it personal
A pigeon can't drop shit if it never flew
Every day is no frills, empty krills
Broken 40 bottles and m.c's with skills
I rest my head on 115
But miracles only happen on 34th,
so I guess life is mean"
 

tom pr

Well-known member
I'm really fond of the big five records the label put out in 2001/02: Labor Days, Cold Vein, Daylight EP, Fantastic Damage and I Phantom. Though Cold Vein is easily the stand-out; I think you're spot on when you say it managed to be authentically hiphop without feeling really forced and retro (which is what really fucked me off with some of the stuff Demigodz were putting out at that stage). It's basically Fantastic Damage, just with everything done better; the production, the rapping, the sense of thematic unity to it...

The first Murs & 9th Wonder album was great too, but didn't really feel like a Def Jux album at all. And that 'miracles only happen on 34th' line is perfect

(edit: gek I completely misinterpreted your post! thought your 'I don't know!' was about Def Jux putting out great records as opposed to Vast disappearing. You can probably ignore half of what's above.. ;))
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
It was a bit odd cos Def Jux basically got it perfectly right with their first full length and it all went rapidly downhill from there (ie same but worse beats- less subtle more beligerant, less funky-- and less nuanced emotionally resonant haunting lyrics and just tired urban angst...)

And YES... the sheer flow through THAT verse is incredible, like some pinpoint sharp urban dérive, detached and yet taking note of every detail, almost gliding like a bravura one take steadi-cam shot... at a sublime remove from the economic/existential horror of it all and yet almost drawing a perverse jouissance from it... all the while floating through a series of perfectly evocative images... all matched by the trippy prog/rave psychedelia of the beat...
 

tom pr

Well-known member
And YES... the sheer flow through THAT verse is incredible, like some pinpoint sharp urban dérive, detached and yet taking note of every detail, almost gliding or floating like a bravura one take steadi-cam shot... at a sublime remove from the economic/existential horror of it all and yet almost drawing a perverse jouissance from it... all the while floating through a series of perfectly evocative images... all matched by the trippy prog/rave psychedelia of the beat...
Great post! It's that sort of talk that makes me wish I had the thing on vinyl as opposed to CD actually. I used to spunk all my money on ughh.com in those days, and I'd always go for CD over record to cut down on the shipping costs...

I think he released a pretty poor solo record.
Yeah, Look Ma No Hands. I think the story at the time was that he was working on a masterpiece and that he put that out as a Wiley-style mixtape-cum-album to fill up the space between full-lengths, but then nothing more came of it. I've got Vordul's solo album which is alright...
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Great post! It's that sort of talk that makes me wish I had the thing on vinyl as opposed to CD actually. I used to spunk all my money on ughh.com in those days, and I'd always go for CD over record to cut down on the shipping costs...


Yeah, Look Ma No Hands. I think the story at the time was that he was working on a masterpiece and that he put that out as a Wiley-style mixtape-cum-album to fill up the space between full-lengths, but then nothing more came of it. I've got Vordul's solo album which is alright...

I always felt a touch sorry for Vordul... in the shadow both literally and figuratively of Vast Aire...

There was talk of a follow-up (for Can Ox). Dunno what happened though.
 

tom pr

Well-known member
There was talk of a follow-up (for Can Ox). Dunno what happened though.
Around the time the live album came out, they said they were going to do a follow up with El-P, Pete Rock and the RZA splitting the production. This was on the def jux website and everything I believe.
 

tom pr

Well-known member
from wiki: 'In a post on his MySpace Blog, Vast confirmed that he was no longer working with Definitive Jux and that plans for a new Cannibal Ox LP were scrapped. He cited creative and financial differences with El-P and Definitive Jux, as well as Vordul's alleged clinical depression.'
 
I really think any Cold Vein sequel would be seriously dissapointing and kind of depressing.

Cold Vein was so caught up in its own moment, I don't think it could ever be duplicated to any extent. All three men involved certainly poured their heart in soul into every sound on this album; so much so that I think when they came up for air at the end up this, they were all kind of empty and they lost their magic touch.
 
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