This album doesn't only borrow it's title from Naipaul's Nobel prize winning book "The Middle Passage", the cover also mentions that it was inspired by this masterpiece of travel writing. And if you look at what the book is about, it doesn't tell you of clean beaches, sparkling water or picturesque mountain tops, but, to use the words of Amazon.com, "follows a racially charged election campaign in British Guiana (now Guyana) and marvels at the Gallic pretension of Martinique society, which maintains the fiction that its roads are extensions of France's routes nationales. [Naipaul] relates the ghastly episodes of the region's colonial past and shows how they continue to inform its language, politics, and values." What then however has to allow the question, if the Himalayan Project is decorating themselves with the association of one incredible piece of literature, that they could never achieve with their own art.

But if you allow Rainman and Chee Malabar to talk to you for the span of eleven tracks, you will realize that their music is very much self reliant and not trying to steal some of the praise given to Naipaul's work. The inspiration was also not meant to have them talk about what the book speaks about in obvious and direct ways, but it rather profits from the total of inspired mood, that helps the two to complete this album.

About half of the album is kept smooth, what is very much to their benefit, as on the occasions where they are getting more bouncy with things, the tracks are often still paired with polished layers. Like on "Beyond This", where the drum is dominant, what then is contrasting the atmospheric background. Things progress on the more standard hip hop tip on "Nuthin' Nice", that's going for the braggadocios verses. There are more bouncy cuts on here, like "Everything" and "Essential Elements", that are coming across cool, but if we are digging deeper into the album, we will hear the true jewels elsewhere.

Cause first of all, there are two acapella rhyming / spoken word tracks on here. One is "The Unseen Side", where criticism is uttered utilizing global catastrophic prophecies, while on the second cut "Malabar", things are taken down from the heavens and are put on the soil of an easily based in reality dialogue, between an unlikely older cat with the wisdom, and the still doubting Malabar. And on these two cuts we hear the lyrical power the Himalaya's are packing. And if we are checking out the tracks "Ecolocation", "1964" and "Bridge Techniques", we will also hear very dope beats, that were, like every other track on here produced by Scott Koozner. On "Ecolocation" he puts some whale singing sounds to the cut, while the rhyming cats get expressions out that are often enough of direct but fitting punchline proportions. On "1964" we are treated to one of the top tracks that we are likely to hear all this year, cause the lyrical poetism is of the strength of the acapella pieces, with the beat being just absolutely amazing, with the perfect wind gusting through your hair type vibe. Finally there's "Bridge Techniques", that's getting a little quicker again, but that still features a hopeful sample.

So if the Himalayas are walking a middle passage, then the one of combining the two styles of coming with punchlines and doing real poetic expression, as well as the pathway between the bouncy and smoothed out. And they walk this path very comfortably, with both ways being right for them, both getting them to where they want to go, and we are mainly thankful that we were asked to come along.