Joey le Soldat

If you’re into rap music like Mafia K1 and generally the sound of the suburbs of French cities, and you
think you have the balls to go one step further, than you are ready for the dude called Joey Le Soldat!
Dead Grips would probably sound similar if they came from Burkina Faso. Yes, this is the place from
which this serious, real bad motherfucker comes from! Rhymes are black as the continent which created Joey Le Soldat. The album is called “Burkin’ba” unf unfortunately I don’t understand either of two languages that Joey Le Soldat and his mates raps on. And they are rapping on French language and the other language that is present in this west African country. Fuck, I am not educated enough, and we don’t have internet here in prison so I can’t tell you which language is in question.
The fact that I don’t understand what they are rapping about cannot stop me to completely freak out on the sounds that are coming from my headphones.
And don’t be mislead with my comparison with Dead Grips. This is still hip hop. Nasty, dark, and very interesting hip hop. You can feel the street, the anger, the uprising and revolt. And then, you can feel Africa. The real one, tortured, troubled, raped, and not the one you would see on the Animal Planet show. There are no antelopes, it smells like machetes.
The beat is spacy and “good for trippin” as one of my inmates would say.
Oh, and no mistake, I received this album from a friend of mine from Paris, and he knows what Soldat is talking about, so this will not turn out to be some sicko with who’s story I would disagree.
I do not know who is the publisher, and where you can find Burkin’ba. Internet is unbelievable, you can
manage finding it!

Music or how to survive (un)real life

02.03.2015.

Convicts are rarely rough and tough, weightlifting, ready for everything – guys, as a lot of you can imagine. Often, the situation in the actual field is much different from a stereotype. Earlier today one offended guy left from the table tennis, he just demonstratively decided to leave, and I didn’t figure out why. And then, offended as he was, he just took his tennis ball and put it in his pocket. Something like: fuck you all; let me see how you will play a game without my tennis ball. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I think the last time I witnessed similar situation was in the third grade. Crazy. And the mentioned prisoner is a grownup married guy, a parent and a robber. Ufff. Retard.

12.03.2015.

Actually, I know a perfect recipe for a decent prison life; I just don’t use it for who knows what reason.

I jumped from my bed while an alarm clock was still ringing, ran to the bathroom, still confused and blurry, to, if nothing else, take a piss in quiet, before there is a line in front of the fucking urinal. When I was finished I went back to my bed, sat down ‘cause lying in bed after the alarm is strictly forbidden. Than I did something stupid, ‘cause I was still pretty out of it, and while my legs were still on the floor I laid my upper body on the bed, just to use what is left of peace and quiet and warmth of my sheets on the bed. That almost turned out as a big mistake. Of course, I fell asleep, and couple of minutes later I woke up and sharply got up and huh…it turned out I was lucky to do that. That was fucking luck. Two seconds after that from behind of my closet the commander showed up in front of my bed. He didn’t catch me sleeping. Fuck yeah! Lying and sleeping from 5:45 and further on is strictly forbidden. Immediately after that I put my headphones on, took first cd that was near, played it in my Discman and turned it loud. Dark Side of Dubstep turned out to be a good option. Making my sleepy, sober brain into a chewing gum, why not. It’s cool by me. Ok, I’ve changed the disc 10 minutes later, but I stayed in the same mood. Shaving went well, counting was over, I woke up Ivana with a phone call so she could get up for work, voluntarily cleaned bakery casserole from yesterdays pie, took it to the bakery, went to our “hiding” room, placed batteries in a charger, made myself lunch, ate it, made breakfast for three next days, took it to the fridge, washed some dishes, took a portable DVD player, which meant that I will watch a movie soon…

Bakery, the “hiding” room and sleeping area where I am now are in three different parts of prison. Its cold outside and the rain is falling but that didn’t bother me at all. Right now I’m listening to some new Ministry and before that I was listening to Kreso and Zuvi. Music is the cure, it really is!

And as I am mentioning music… huh, if to someone music means something, that’s me. Ok, I am one of those people.

Here where I am, of course, like everything else, that relationship with music is on a brighter level that it use to be outside. I listen to music on my Discman, with headphones in my ears, there is no other option. Radios and other similar shit I don’t take serious. In these circumstances, music player has a big role. For a long time I could only listen to audio cd’s ‘cause the cd player I had couldn’t play mp3’s. And therefore my options were bit poorer. Although at the beginning that was a bad thing, after some time it became really cool. First I got a bunch of old albums, there were no folders, options, and that made me listen to some forgotten albums. To really listen. And to listen to something that is 10, 15, and 20 years old is a special feeling. So I started to discover again how Life of Agony, PJ Harvey and Helmet are fucking GREAT. I mean, I knew that as a fact before, but I forgot about them. And not to mention Wu Tang and ODB. I could list you the names of performers indefinitely. I don’t remember the last time I had goosebumps like a few days ago in the yard while I was listening to Djecaci’s album Drama and watching herd of horses running in mud. And then I got a Discman that read mp3’s and with it 20 cd’s filled with music that was burned on cd’s from 2003 up to 2006. Fucking hell! How the music really turns you back, oh man. The real flashes. Almost like a smell. I listened to some real masterpieces back then. And the combinations are awesome. On the same cd there are Agoraphobic Nosebleed and Capleton, Crom Mags and Lolita Storm. Crazy man. But, it’s not like I’m living in the past. I started torturing my girlfriend and my friends with my wishes of what to listen, so I would be up to speed. It’s like having a slow dial up internet. I remember something, I request that, than someone finds it, buys a cd, burn it, add some more names and then sends it to me by postal service, and when the cd arrives it’s like Christmas, New year and my birthday. 3 in 1. So I am up to speed guys. The new Kisa Metaka is fucked up, and the new Run The Jewels 2 is the best fucking thing that I received in the last couple of days.

Sometimes I can understand why guys shit next to the hole in the squat toilet! There is not worst feeling than when you go to the shitter, lower your pants and aim the hole, eject what you need to eject, hit the center, and after the sound “plooop” instead getting a reward for a perfect hit you get a few backfires of cold and filthy drops of water on your butt cheeks. Ok, its much better to hit you on your butt cheeks than on your balls, I guess… And then while you are cleaning those wet areas on your butt you just have to think about the previous guy and if he was nice enough to flush the water after pissing or not. Its better not to think about what he was doing besides pissing.

So, I can understand people who shit next to the hole, but I fucking don’t understand why after shitting you don’t move your shit to the black hole.

Speaking of fecal matter, the level of water in the basement is higher than ever, shit is floating all around, and it smells pretty serious. It’s really unbelievable how we are accepting this fact without any comments. Out. Peace.

Lazarth – „Fall of Lazarath“

(SKCNS 2014.)

I could hardly picked up a more suitable record to review while I’m doing time for pot in a fucking prison yard.

For the uninitiated, this is a fucking good hardcore band from Novi Sad, named after the village Lazarath, known for being the largest marijuana grow in the entire Europe and wider, until recently. Unfortunately for both the inhabitants and users throughout the Balkans and thereabouts, Lazarath has fallen. Somehow, it would have been better if the album was named Rise instead of Fall, but there you go.

So a little bit about the music. Lazarath is a relatively new band in that old rocknroll game. A new band with some old faces, though. Lazarath members have been a big part of the scene in various ways years back. Bayonets, Remedy, Brickheads, Mitesers… those are just some of the bands these boys had important roles in. They’re fresh, interesting, provocative, sharp, fast, and in a word, fucking awesome. To be honest, it’s not like they invented hot water or anything, and that’s not what they intended to do anyway – but what they do is quality work. Getting so many different people together could have been a nasty hodgepodge, but fortunately that wasn’t the case here.

The music they play is basically hardcore, but there’s always a certain dirty, garage, trash metal atmosphere. Front side of the album sleeve definitely contributes to it – there’s the reversed pentagram, the face of a nasty creature of sorts, up to the very font that was used to spell out the band’s name. Just glancing over it, the album could easily be placed on a shelf with Mayhem, Deicide or some similar kind of demons.

The band plays their thing using drums, bass and two guitars. The lyrics are in English, and they have a specific, high-pitched vocals which are definitely one of the band’s trademarks. Again, this doesn’t reduce the value in any way.

While I can’t say it bothers me, while listenning to the album I was constantly aware it has been recorded in multiple takes, in various places. That’s most apparent in the drums sound, which is sometimes recorded just right – filthy and how it should be, while in other parts it has a more “modern”, more neutered sound to it. Having said that, those are the finer points that nobody will notice, except perhaps a couple of us jerks that kinda know a thing or two about the sound.

Finally, releasing the album in actual physical shape is a big plus. Like, a real CD, a sleeve and all that. If it wasn’t for that, me wasting time in prison and all, the album would probably never reach me. Also, I’m fairly certain that in the free world, there also are a few geeks that listen to their music computer-free. Anyway, as it turned out, Lazarath is an awesome new band, and their album “Fall of Lazarath” is a solid brick on the harcore side of the rocknroll wall.