Album Review: Def Wish Cast - Evolution Machine

Def Wish Cast's first EP didn't trouble the top 100 but, if sales reflected initiative, 1991's Mad As A Hatter would have shared the ARIA charts with the likes of Billy Ray Cyrus, Roxette and Public Enemy. Billy Ray has filled his time since by spunking out a bong-addled Mouseketeer, PE's Terminator X runs an ostrich farm and Roxette are still big in Germany. DWC have had peaks and troughs in the past 20 years, but now they're back with Evolution Machine, an album that will make you nostalgic for the future and look forward to the past.

Beats and production are high quality, hypnotic and robotic from end to end, and contribute to the curious 'then vs now' battle for your ears. The eponymous first track is four and a half minutes of block-rockin' bombast, Rock On and Day Tripper are bonafide head nodders and Forever rocks the vocoder like Bambaataa did. Double time raps and simple scratches tip the Kangol to hip hop's history, while we wonder what's next.

In making an album like Evolution Machine, Def Wish Cast show their pedigree and skip over the emo and ocker-hop influences which muddy the waters of today's homegrown gene pool. Just as the hoverboards in Back To The Future II look crazy old fashioned and 1920s style is now in vogue, Def Wish Cast mess with our perception of what chronology should feel like, and in the process create an album that fills a gap in the canon of Aussie hip hop we didn't know existed.