Ido Tavori - Rhythm is a Beggar

Rhythm is a Beggar apparently sets out to join the dots between indie, hip-hop and electronica. Are these really worlds that needed to meet? Could they not have just been allowed to remain on their own, blissfully unaware of each other’s existence? On the evidence of this album, the answer is an un-resounding maybe. It fails to summon up enough opinion to tip the balance either way, really. Some tracks, like opener Wasteland or Top Hats, slip by quietly in a stoned-sounding Kruder & Dorfmeister haze, while others, like the glitchy, heavier Haunted, manage to divert for a few minutes. It’s all a bit samey though, the boom-bap beats too repetitive to excite, the samples not original enough to remember and the rhymes too conventional to arrest. Background music, then, and who's got time to listen to that these days?