DJ IQ is a well known DJ in the UK hip-hop scene since winning the under 18's DMC DJ Championship aged 17 and being UK favourite Jehst's official live DJ for a number of years playing in many countries.

This is IQ's second solo album after his debut Brainfood was received to critical acclaim. It was exciting to read that this album would have guest appearances by no fewer than twenty-six rappers on it - most notably Jehst, Verb T, Kashmere and
Asaviour, (who can be seen touring with Jehst and IQ).

The album starts with a garbled intro of various people (let’s assume they're the guest rappers) saying “Live From The Sofa!” which is short and leads nicely into the first track Green Grenade with Verb T doing the vocals.

The beat has subdued vibraphone sounds on it and a slow downbeat style drumbeat that is very easy to listen to. The vocals are easy to follow and have a wide stereo sound, which creates a ‘thick’ track to listen to, and cleverly neither the music nor the vocals get in the way of each other.

The next track is a 7-minute hip-hop epic called 8 Bars of Fire, which contains most of the guest rappers all rapping for the aforementioned eight bars. The beat has that layered, busy industrial sound where you think the sounds are coming from the workings of a factory.

Again cleverly you can hear exactly what's happening as IQ has chosen not to include a bassline, therefore considering that there's many different vocal styles at work here and a particularly busy beat, which pretty much covers a full spectrum of sound.

9 to 5 is more of a party/club tune with layered percussion and a constant pulsing bassline but still with that crackly/retro ambience to it. Unfortunately the vocals delivered by Dubbledge are forgettable and boring.

Overall this has a more ambient and happy-go-lucky sound to it than much of UK hip-hop such as Klashnekoff, even when the lyrical themes are more about the hopelessness of modernity (for example, Green Grenade).

Some of the rappers leave a bit to be desired and one can only imagine that some of these guys must be friends and they were only included so as not to hurt anyone's feelings; unfortunately it’s at the cost of making some very good beats skip-worthy.

A&R people are asleep so go support this!