Originally posted on J-Lounge.co.uk

Artist: English Frank

Title: Listen To Frank (Mixtape)

Favourite Tracks: The Shape Up, Envy, Forced To Ride, Southside Connection, Music’s My Sister, The Warm Up, Live My Life, F64

Early last year, maybe even toward the end of 2010, I started hearing stuff from this dude English Frank. Something seemed familiar about his tone and energy but I couldn’t immediately place where I recognised it from. Then it clicked, this was Frantic Frank of the Kraftsmen. I loosely knew Prodigal of the Kraftsmen and would buy bundles of the “Frantic Frank An Da Kraftsmen” album from him to sell, I never met Frank but always thought he sounded like a lunatic on tracks. He hasn’t lost that intensity and this mixtape is a great example of how he’s focused his content in the intervening years.

Listen To Frank is a compilation of most of Frank’s buzz building tracks from the past year with a handful of brand new tracks mixed in, including re-recordings of the bars used in his SBTV Warm Up and F64 spots, to keep his dedicated supporters happy.

The first track on the tape, ‘The Shape Up’, sets the tone for the entire project, blunt, passionately delivered, and well produced (by Preston Play), with a feature from another respectable artist, in this case Big Cakes.

A lot of artists put out tapes, and albums, with features on every song giving the impression they lack confidence in their ability to carry a track on their own. This isn’t the case on Listen To Frank with only 4 of the 14 tracks featuring other artists, and out of those 4, 2 of them are full blown posse tracks. The features Frank has decided to include are well respected by fans and artists alike including Mic Righteous, Jaja & Naja Soze, Logic, Malik MD7, G Frsh, Dru Blu, Nolay, Dot Rotten, and the previously mentioned Big Cakes, to name just a few. And as I said, the majority of these artists are spread out over two massive posse cuts, ‘Envy’ and ‘Southside Connection’.

‘Envy’ is an interesting track, produced by Red Skull, the concept isn’t new with each artist rapping negatively about themselves from their critics point of view but I don’t remember hearing it done on a track with 9 artists before. Frank adopts a Biggie ‘Gimme The Loot’ style approach to his verse taking on two personas and doing voices for both characters arguing back and forth about his road credentials before switching back to English Frank mode and addressing the doubters with his trademark ferocity and directness.

Most of Frank’s newer fans will know him from his appearances on SBTV, having done a Warm Up Session and an F64 which now seems to be removed from the SBTV channel, so it was a great idea to re-record and clean them up for the mixtape.

My favourite track on the tape is ‘Music’s My Sister’, produced by Alex Breadman. ‘Music’s My Sister’ is Frank’s love letter to music, detailing his introduction to HipHop, his influences, how important he regards his musical legacy, his general passion and respect for what he does, and his utter disdain for those who disrespect it by releasing shit music.

“Music’s my Sister and I love her/ I’m getting mad ‘cos all these little dickheads tryna hug her// Keep talking shit to my sister Im’a slug ya/ And if you ever cheat on my sister Im’a buck ya//” 

Overall Listen To Frank is a very good collection of English Frank’s music to date although I would have liked maybe 3 or 4 more unheard tracks to beef it up a bit as a reward to his long time supporters. Having said that, it’s a free download and with his work rate being what it is it won’t be long until we hear more from English Frank and I doubt he will leave us waiting too much longer for his full length album.

Ben Barlow

‘An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump’ – Joseph Wright

‘Basin Of San Marco’ – Canaletto

‘Virgin In Prayer’ – Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato

‘Surprised!’ – Henri Rousseau

‘The Rich Man Being Led To Hell’ - David Teniers

‘Coastal Scene’ – Theo Van Rysselberghe

‘The Annunciation’ – Nicolas Poussin

‘Saint Francis In Meditation’ – Francisco de Zurbaran

Liam Neeson acting like a fucking badman, I.E. like liam Neeson. Pretty cheesy script at times, but it’s an OK movie. Neeson plays a depressed and somewhat suicidal sniper hired to protect oil company workers from wolves while they maintain pipes in the wilderness. A plane transporting Neeson and the workers crashes in the middle of nowhere leaving a handful of survivors who try to make it through the wolves territory to safety. People die, mostly by being eaten by wolves. I only really saw it because I’m a big Liam Neeson fan, probably wouldn’t bother with it if he wasn’t in it.

The only silent films I remember seeing prior to this were slapstick comedy short’s starring Charlie Chaplin, and Laurel and Hardy so I wasn’t sure how a silent film without a shit load of in your face visual gags would hold my attention for a feature. With all the great press it recieved and it being nominated for a Best Picture Oscar (I try to see all nominations each year) I thought it would be worth a swipe of my unlimited movie pass to check it out. Although The Artist is a silent movie, Director Michel Hazanavicius does actually use sound to great effect in 2 scenes; a nightmare sequence and then to punctuate main character George Valentin’s eventual move in to talkies. I don’t know much about the history of cinema but I presume The Artist’s depiction of the rapid transition from silent films to non-silent films is an accurate one. Once the microphone and sound recording technology was in place to make it profitable, the sky was pretty much the limit as far as film ideas were concerned, extreme physicality from actors was no longer needed and story lines could gain a serious amount of extra depth from dialogue. The Artist tells this story excellently through George Valentin, the silent film superstar who suddenly finds himself to be old news and pushed aside to make way for a new generation of actors. Valentin loses his fortune and his life spirals out of control before he is saved by Peppy Miller, one of the new breed of actors who had fallen in love with Valentin before she was famous and while he was riding high, who eventually brings Valentin back to the big screen. Essentially its a story of evolution and adapting to change in order to survive.

When you dont have dialogue other things need to increase in strength to compensate for it, like a blind person getting improved hearing (Does this actually happen?). In The Artist’s case these two things are the acting and the score. The musical score was composed by Ludovic Bource and it’s an amazing piece of work, it helps to push the story along, and set’s the tone for each scene, perfectly. The acting though is the real high point of the movie, Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo are outstanding. I’ve not seen all the films the Best Actor In A Leading Role nominations are from but out of those I have seen Dujardin takes it easily and although I don’t think Berenice Bejo was as good I also think she deserves her Best Supporting Actress nomination too. They both showed an amazing expressiveness and conveyed the story in a way I can’t imagine any Hollywood actors being able to. Maybe it’s because they’re French.

The Artist is definitely worth a paid ticket for, and if you miss it make sure you see it when it’s released on DVD/Blu-Ray.

I enjoyed it, thought DiCaprio was very good, and as usual Clint Eastwood did a good job in the Director’s chair. I have a high degree in shitty American Studies but literally had no clue about Hoover’s life, except for him being the director of the FBI, so it was interesting to see how much power he had over the President’s he served under and how he gained it through blackmail and intimidation. I didn’t know about the rumours of his crossdressing so the scene with him dressing up in his dead Mother’s clothes was a little baffling, even after finding out I still think that scene comes off a bit Norman Bates-ish and probably could have been left out the movie. There’s a lot of scenes with DiCaprio and others in prosthetics to make them look older, it had to be done but I dont think prosthetics were particularly well done, the characters just looked like they were wearing old-people masks, because they were I suppose. Although I think Eastwood did a good job and I enjoyed the movie I think it’s structure was a little off. It’s set up so that Hoover is telling the story of his life and the FBI to an agent assigned to write it up as a biography, this allows the story to flip between the weeks before his death and different periods in his life, I don’t think it is a terrible device but it just seemed a little off. Worth seeing for DiCaprio’s performance.

Other than making a big noise online there isn’t too much that we can do to combat SOPA but someone came up with the idea of ‘Black March’, details of which are on the .JPG below.