Okay, take a sheet of paper with some printing on it. Go to a Xerox (or Ricoh or whatever) copy machine and copy that piece of paper. Take the original off the thing and put the copy on the screen. Copy that. Now, as you all know, the second generation copy, will be worse than the first generation copy, and obviously worse than the original. But why am I telling you this? Well, in a way this analogy goes for hip hop, with it actually being something you want to do. Take for example a sample: you got this piece of music, that you take out of the context of a whole song. It will hence be an abstracted copy. Then you process it, chop it or whatever (well, hopefully you do), and you include it in the final song. So you've again processed it, and it will sound fresh, maybe different, maybe less clean than the original. And that's actually something you want to do.

Now the reason why I open this review with this paragraph, because the Heiruspects play live instruments. What means, they don't do the whole processing, copying, that was just described as being desirable. And maybe that's exactly why live hip hop too often doesn't sound right: it's not worked with. It's not hip hop-ized, so to say. The instruments are too clean, they are still separate from each other, and not melted into one big puddle of sound. And only few artists have been able to prevent that from happening, and often times when you look at their working process, they do use live instruments, but they mess with it somehow later on.

So the Heiruspecs' album has a live stage feel, that sounds reduced to what's possible to do on stage without depending on playback. And that's always less than when you have a whole studio of trickery available, that helps you make the sound big, one, if not to say good. And this is the biggest struggle the Heiruspecs face when we are listening to "Small Steps". The album makes more sense in a live concert surrounding, than at home, where it also sounds empty. Very harsh words for something that is eloquent, musical and often enough showing moments that are quite good. So "Meters" with the beat boxing is nice, the lyrics are on here, just like on all tracks good and often reflective, and the muted horn is adding something extra, extra to the back. But even the mixing of this song makes the track sound as if everything was recorded at the same time, just giving this indisputable 'live' feel, that we have a hard time to get with, and that's somewhat not hip hop.

But nevertheless, there are songs that we enjoy, like "Memory", that however only further proves our point. Because this is an instrumental piece, where the musicians don't have to bring the boom bap, but can mingle around the more soulful charters (or later on "The Part About The Treason" is also nicely going for the blues). "In Regrets" is featuring Slug from Atmosphere and as he's always one of the most interesting to listen to, this gets our full attention as well. There's also more guest on here, like New MC (of Kanser) dropping by to do the jazzy and friendly "June", P.O.S. is on the nice and soulful "Commonwealth" and finally Qwazaar of the Typical Cats drops by on "Traction", that features a cool flute.

So we need to conclude that this is good for what it is, but not too good for everything that it isn't (if that can make sense). The instrumentation is safely played, the lyrics are on point and there's a couple of tracks on here we do enjoy, with dope, jazzy, souley and funky vibes. But it fails in bringing us much of the grit, the typicalness that makes hip hop to be what it is: a dirty art form. And it mainly disappoints with just sounding too live. So the right place to listen to the Heiruspecs must be in a club, a jazz caffee, just something with a stage. But at home, well...