That being said, most of the vocals on this record are also incredible. Qwel rattles his teeth over dejection, disillusion, and dogma. He writes like he’s on a vowel-budget and can only afford three different sounds per song. The one syllable that isn’t rhymed in one line will get recalled three lines later and litter the next eight bars. Examples: “We wallow in depression / stress to face the odds / that’s ’cause why we in this flesh we away from God � try to reason how the demons try to stray you off….” (“Cabin Fever”) or   “Teachers lying in your school / we’re taught to be monkeys…. Created in God’s image / not survival of the fittest / the effects that we witness / because we’re taught to be monkeys” (“Machinegun Monkey” aka “Kill Dawkins”) or “Future drama / futurama / shoot your mama / sue your father / want a tv show? / I know the truth your honour” (“High Tithe”). Qwel doesn’t need to betray his point at the cost of an elaborate rhyme scheme. His method and his message make equal impressions, and that’s a rare talent.

    However, when it comes down to it, most of the songwriting on this album is terrible. Qwel writes in bars, so his verses usually land both feet on the beat, but the dude does those verselong choruses that generally obliterate any catchiness or momentum that his writing builds from the start of a song. Think Cappadonna’s verse on “Winter Warz”, triple it, and then imagine how that would work if the producer and MC completely ignored each other. Sometimes the beat goes off into what might be a chorus, but no one tells Qwel. Either that or the beat’s wearing a “Charles Darwin Has a Point” t-shirt and Qwel’s all “Beat? Bitch, I’m not talking to you,” so he  keeps rapping and rapping until he hits his own chorus, at which point the beat is like “Fuck this, I’m not waiting for this windbag Creationist” and goes off into the second verse. That’s cool for a couple of flourishes (see Cappadonna’s verse on “Winter Warz”). It’s exhausting and annoying for 13 of 16 tracks on an album.

   Yeah, and sure there’s a God awful “dropping science” pun to be made here. But this writer doesn’t believe in puns.

    The Artist Legally Known As Jeff Logan has expanded his repertoire since Greenball, and the man known for his ability to put an Emu SP 1200 on his lap and program a beat like he was typing on a keyboard now fleshes out his compositions with an MPC, various laptop tools and some live instrumentation. But that doesn’t take the edge off of his work, and this critic has seen producers sit down and listen to Jel beats and play “Is it a break or is it programmed?” with a hit/miss ratio of about 50/50. The guy knows drums. He knows them well enough to almost overshadow the return of PRT’s Wise Intelligent on “WMD”, probably one of the most underrated songs of 2006. Logan’s hits swell and rattle your Ipod buds, while the Poor Righteous Teacher spits the benefits of his research, tracing Osama Bin Laden’s genealogy to Bush business associates, then calling out the music industry for de facto freedom of speech violations: “He’ll lose his job / If your DJ ever play this / And get dropped off his label if your MC dare to say this.”

    Play that song twice and then backtrack to “All Day Breakfast”, which is essentially the opposite of “WMD”. Here, Jel flies solo with unidentifiable soaring samples, epic drums, elegant keys, distorted hits and chords, massive cymbal crashes. It’s a truly beautiful piece of instrumental hip hop: sun-on-the-snow frigid and violent like a glacial avalanche. “Sweet Cream In It”, on the other hand, sees a wailing blues guitar spliced over drums chopped like a perpetual four-armed jazz percussionist’s drum solo. “Mislead” shifts gears again, abstracting melody from atonal synth samples densely layered on top of each other over stuttering, shape-changing drums and distorted clacks that somehow end up sounding like congas. If you see a theme emerging, you’re probably right: Jel does everything possible to stay away from the number one killer of all instrumental hip hop records - monotony. And he succeeds admirably simply by refusing to settle into stock-sounds and overused loops. Or Chris Martin soundalikes and trendy Hyphy MC’s, if you prefer that comparison. (Ouch. – Editor)

   In fact, if there’s a complaint to be had about Soft Money, it’s due solely to “No Solution”, which delves a little too far into the smooth sounds of Gap-shopping, and is an obvious misfit in the tracklist for it. Instrumental hip hop records are inherently limited, but that’s what makes a disc like Soft Money such a standout. Jel takes the genre’s standard song structure (bass goes here, glitchy part here, horn or string loops fade out before the bridge at which point the DJ cuts in a Guru quote to avoid the appearance of nerdy laptopper, and the whole thing repeats again to fade-out) and flips it on its head. You want some stimulating beats to write to?

Throughout Symptomatic, Kevroc channels everything you loved about the last round of break-based hip hop. Not all of the drums flaunt static fills, but on “Knight of the Roundtable” the “9^th Wonder” break is played at fast-rap speed and Kevroc staccatos so many puns and run-ons around a half-time jazz piano that you expect Pharoahe Monch to shout out Paul C at the end. On “I’m Ill” he spits smart,  structured battle rhymes (“read me carefully / use me only as directed / and press apply firmly to all areas affected”) and weaves in and out of a series of impressive tongue twisters intended to piss of transcribing reviewers. On “Covert Op”, Diamond D’s signature spaghetti-western strings enhance the paranoia while Kevroc runs through a day in the life of MC Kiefer Sutherland, ending each line with quadruple-doubles. He’s the type of MC that makes you “invent” technical terms to describe rhyme patterns.

    “Outside Looking In” is a particular standout with its filtered music-box and Wild Cowboys-lifted xylophone, but the biggest treat on the record is “BMOC”, which chucks a rollerskating guitar and paralleled bass-line to the rear of the mix while rolling drum fills and a massive, unrelenting synth smother the front. Kevroc channels Brother J and Wise Intelligent, waxes righteous and laments “the mystery / the Beautiful Man Of Color.” Even in 1996 this kind of focus would have been a seven-year throwback, but Darc Mind hide nothing, splicing Chuck D cuts into the hook to bring attention to that very point.

   It’s unlikely that this record would have been in anyone’s top ten, had it been released in ’95 or ’96, as intended. It probably would have been a dark horse pick, chosen by the kids who can recite Extinction Agenda backwards and forewards, who never picked a coast, and who were still fuming over The Source handing All Balls Don’t Bounce two and a half mics. But if you check Ebay, these are also the kids who paid $50 for a sealed copy of Cloud Nine last week - there’s a market gap for records like Symptomatic, simply for the fact that the “feel” of the album reminds some people of a time when they actually did line up at record shops because they actually could rely on their favourite artists to put out dope product and didn’t have to check for leaks first. So Darc Mind’s “2006 debut album” is a time capsule - and it’s also a rare case where you can say “Man, this sounds dated”, and mean it as a sincere compliment.