The Logic of Chance

Last time I took a listen to Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip it was on recommendation from a girl I was trying to impress at the time. I only really took a cursory listen, more to keep a promise than anything, and I only bothered with Thou Shalt Always Kill, their debut single. I found it annoying, self-righteous and condescending but on the flip-side quite funny when Pip mumbles stuff like “Thou shalt not shake it like a Polaroid picture; thou shalt not wish your girlfriend was a freak like me”, and I never had a thought about them again till now.

They’re back anyhow, despite my indifference, with a new album and they’re a lot more three-dimensional than I thought. Dan Le Sac provides cracking glitch-hop style production, although I should state that at times it does sound a bit like he’s playing gameboy Super Mario through a big sub-woofer. I like it a lot but I suppose many wouldn’t. It merges nicely with Scroobius Pip’s spoken staccato delivery.

As far as the words go Pip’s jampacked Logic Of Chance to the gills with sanctimonious proselytising, familiar to anyone who heard Thou Shalt Always Kill. It would also be fairly familiar stuff to anyone who’s heard a David Cameron speech lately and at times he does make me think of Mr Cameron, were he to launch a rap career (Do you think he’d go by the pseudonym D-Cam?).

Logic of Chance is all about ‘Broken Britain’ and a youth “acting uneducated sexually” and “rolling around the streets rowing and fighting”. On mid album track Great Britain it almost seems like they’ve pinched the lyrics from a Prime Minister’s Questions session as Pip declares that “in the 2008/2009 government report violent crime was not listed to increase or decrease” over cracked beats and tin pot electronics. I’m all for a protest singer but the politicing here is so superficial and banal and that it really just treats its listeners like idiots incapable of thinking for themselves

But despite it all there’s something I quite like about the duo. Sick Tonight, the opener, melds a rollicking liquid D’n’B backing to some serious anger from Pip. It makes me feel good and isn’t that what all decent music should do? Maybe given different political inclinations I could listen along punching the air and saying to myself, Scroobius Pip, you’ve got it bloody right there.