artists include: redcloud, celph titled, mars ill, sev statik, mcenroe, storm the unpredictable, interlock, logic, braille, tachichi, apathy, others.

If you want to put together a compilation, in today's time, you will not have much of a problem to find a number of artists that will be happy to contribute songs. That however says nothing about the quality of the music, and you can even argue, that the wacker the artists, the quicker they submit something. And further, if the cuts are good or not, if there's no common concept behind the tracks, then it's merely a selection and collection of songs, that for some more or less odd reason ended up on the same disc.

Now, the "AberFoyle Springs" compilation was put together by the people of HipHopHotSpot.com. And they like to use the subtitle 'Refreshing Underground Flavor' to describe this record. In some cases they don't even lie, and we do get some funky tracks, in other cases however, we get un-fine-tuned offerings, or even worse, cuts that have been out for quite a bit of time. So for example Red Cloud's "Ridiculous Junk", a cut that features Braille, Mr Tru, Man Of War and Gibraan, as well as his "Last Of The Mex-hee-cans" has been released some time ago on that cats album. And with the same having to be said about Coleon's "Squanderin'", Dirt's "Shanghai Burning" and "Catharsis" by Angle, you gotta wonder how much of this is actually new, or even exclusively recorded for this compilation. Then again, them being released before can't mean that they are bad, and in all cases, the cuts are cool if not dope.

But are there more cool, or preferably dope cuts on here? Yes. One of those is DutchMassive's cut "Fallout", that also features Celph Titled (who returns later on the funky fresh "Breeze Block Freestyle" with Apathy) and Walkman. The Celph Titled beat has a cool looking back vibe to it, what however is also due to this cut actually being from 1998. Mars ILL are also rarely doing things wrong, and so is their "Rap Fans (Remix)" featuring The Commitee another one of the cuts we gotta give a nod of approval to. The beat is dope, and with the lyrics being partially done by manCHILD, there's little doubt that we at least get one verse of true thoughtfulness. Mars ILL's Deepspace5 buddy Sev Statik comes on next with "Can't Come Off", where he goes for the straight up braggadocios, over a good enough DJ Money Mike beat, that features alienating gregorian singing though.

Anonymous Twist offers the nicely reduced "Integrity" (and later on Tachichi and Gordski do the same with "Hick Town"), that is mainly carried by his effortless flow, that has little problem to come with the appropriate snottiness. Moving into more plush quarters, there's "The Evolution" by Rugged T'Reign, that are also known as Nowledge Of Self. The cut here is however not living up to the bliss that is reached on the album. What however is more a statement of the album's dopeness, than it is a sign of this here's weakness. Because just how they slowed down that 'the revolution will not be televised' sample, is ill. And as it's the case with compilations, the styles are exchanged quicker than bowling pins, hence Toolshed's "Out Of Rope" is going a very jazzy route with the beat, that hence is nice. They recording is very lo-fi though, and the lyrics are suffering much because of that. On "Urban Camper" by Vandal, as well as on "Darker The Berry" by Storm The Unpredictable both the lyrics and the beat are happening again, with both tracks even having something to say, be it urban survival in the first case, or the complexity of skin complexity in the latter case, that appears to be one of the best tracks on this album.

So there certainly is a number of cool tracks on here, with only few being quite bad. Still it's especially a collection of tracks that never were intended to be on the same record, when they were created. Hence it's a wild random selection, what gives it a variety of styles, but also a more slippery surface making it harder for you to hold the whole in a firm grip. What doesn't mean you can't try though.