Gilead7 And Subtrax Peaces Of War on LP
This is the last project of its kind; the official grand finale of an era. While many projects of late, in an attempt to stay relevant, take on the boom bap sound while softening it in either rhymes, production, or both, Gilead7 and Subtrax stay even more relevant by delivering a project that is extremely sharp on both ends. Gilead's philosophy behind Peaces of War is this: everything in the universe is composed of a duality of disturbance (war) and serenity (peace), and one side never conquers the other.
The album asserts to the listener that the realization of universal balance through peace and war ends the futile quest of trying to solve for either side. In "Shoveling," over Subtrax's sword-sharp rolling percussion and thick melancholy atmospheric wickedness, Gilead, I.B. Fokuz, and Clockwize embody the dualistic tension held between the underground and the mainstream, as they take on the character of miners digging through corrupted soil to discover the true priceless vinyl of the Gods hidden at the deepest levels.
"Mask Wardrobe" with Word Man uniquely explores a type of what DuBois would call "double-consciousness" as we negotiate our non-European heritage within a Euro-American-dominated work culture for mental and ancestral survival. Over Subz's brooding drums and muddy piano sampled track, "Piece Offering" is literally Gilead's short rap lecture on religion, Afro-diasporic and Native Mesoamerican history, and the hypocrisy of hip-hop culture, offering broken "pieces" of misconceptions to the listener, who must inevitably hold on to them even though they're irreparably shattered.
With the darkest, hardest, and strangely melodic sounds, unorthodox rhythms, secularly theological writing, and confrontational thoughts, Gilead7 and Subtrax have truly given the culture its last uncompromising boom bap record before the future, looking beyond the subgenre through the subgenre itself to see the next sound. The self-proclaimed last prophets of classic boom bap, Gilead7 and Subtrax present the final gospel of the glorious purely raw breakbeat and sample era of our youth, and completed it on the highest note possible. Now we can move toward the new, knowing full well that any needed eulogy to a "Golden Era" was sung in uncontained celebration in the annals of Peaces of War.