Fated Empire

We have revamped our web store and launched it over at http://fatedempire.myminto.com We have plans to add a lot more merch, but for now you can buy physical copies of several of our albums, and two new Graves 33 t-shirt designs.

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback.

Click on the image to go straight to Bandcamp where you can download the EP. It’s a “Pay-What-You-Want” project, so you can even snag it for free.

And in case that wasn’t enough, we have a new EP from Graves 33 coming on April 1st. That’s right, we do not rest on our laurels here. Stay tuned for more news about Golden Seal.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard Ecid’s music, but this Minnesota rapper/producer’s trademark aggressive lullaby-like flow has been a staple in my own personal rotation since I first heard his music a few years ago. Ecid is the head of Fill In The Breaks, a grassroots level independent label, and both his musical style and his business sensibility represent a meeting of old school underground style and modernist sensibility. His raps are abstract enough to be interesting, but coherent enough to be understood, and his beats are finely crafted and heavily personalized. When you hear an Ecid production, you know its an Ecid production.

His newest record, Werewolf Hologram, is his best offering yet. When I last toured I had the opportunity of a personal listening in his own home studio, and I was excited just to get to hear it again recently. Ecid specializes in storytelling and clever turn-of-phrase couplets, and his voice cuts through the often serene landscape of his beats like a knife through your prized possessions. His delivery forces you to pay attention to it, and even if reluctant at first, you will be glad you were along for the ride by the time the album closes.

The record starts with the title track Werewolf Hologram, which serves to remind us of just what kind of music Ecid makes. It presents you the mold before it shatters it, and it works really well as a bridge between his earlier material and this record. An early stand-out track for me is “I Heart Gravity” where the frantic chorus serves as a mantra alongside witticisms like “I’ve got more soul than a sneaker fiend with a nerd-rap fetish, ya get it?” This gives a way to the grand scale analysis of “The Pursuit of Everything In Between”, which has one of the most incredible beats on the record, varying between a mellow verse and a super-chopped chorus. It’s hard to pick stand-out tracks on this record because there’s not really anything I don’t love on it.

The second half of the album starts with “Marching On”, which inspires with a simple hook and some of my favorite lines on the album like “You must be smoking the rock you’ve been hiding underneath” and “so what if God’s got a monopoly on thought?” The track really embodies Ecid’s personality, and every line is delivered with an edge that you either get behind him or get run over. After a pretty flute sample outro we come to another great song “WOOLF”, where Ecid’s trademark storytelling makes its first real showing on the record. The narrative is one of hunger and hip-hop and a desire for recognition and as a fellow rapper, it resonates really well with me. Later we get dystopian dance party song “The Future Is Free”, which features Ecid’s Fill In The Break fellow rapper David Mars with a slick cameo and a radio-friendly groove but an actual message hidden beneath this veneer.

After the posse cut “Rock Stars Don’t Apologize”, which features the guest line-up of Awol One, Kristoff Krane and Eyedea over a low droning beat that reminds me of how underground rap often sounded in 2001 in all the good ways, we get to the last few albums on the track. The album’s closing section is one of its strongest, with the guitar layered wistful “Back From Japan” leading into absolute banger that is “Surprise Yourself” and finally closing with the choppy conversational “So Much Fire” where Ecid admits he’s “on the weirder side of different” which is definitely something we here at Fated Empire can appreciate.

Overall this record is probably my favorite thing to come out this year. If you want to pick it up yourself head over to Ecid’s bandcamp and grab a copy HERE

I was supposed to review this album weeks ago but my body let me down and I caught the flu. Luckily, this album is a pretty good get-well soundtrack so I’ve had plenty of time to listen to it and form a, pardon the pun, educated opinion. Educated Consumers are a duo consisting of rap battle veteran Seez Mics and sample weaver Jay Bombbeat. They come from the nation’s capital and neatly intertwine golden era influences with modern day know how and sensibility.

The record starts with a spacey jazz intro track called Saw It In Space before firmly hitting its boom bap stride with the title track Winning Winter where Seez Mics laces a somber beat with a myriad of stories of winter time. The album keeps a somber tone through its early chapters, with the next two tracks being a two parter (“There’s No Irony In…” and “…Being Paid To Fuck” respectively), but then Seez Mics comes out swinging furiously on the snare-roll and violin canvas of “Or Do I”.

The middle of the album continues to be a little more aggressive on songs like the funky guitar and anti-romance laden “Hang Man” and the cascading bass line and sarcasm soaked “Hell Hole of Halos”. On the latter Seez Mics matches up his cadence with the falling bass line as he waxes poetic about good, evil, god and the devil, which is of course a subject we love here at The Empire.

This transfers to what I’d like to call the album’s third movement, which starts with the dystopian soothsaying of The Prize. This rolls into the soulful and almost angry sounds of “Ahead of Myself” which features a really great guest verse from Cubbiebear (another great East Coast true school artist). My favorite song on the album is “Get Your Log On” a song about our dependence on a wired society that features a guest verse from friend-of-the-empire Sadistik and Dood Computer who I hadn’t heard of until now, but he closes the song with a slick delivery and just a hint of what the kids these days call “swagger”.

The album continues in a sort of bleak but at peace mood until it finally ends with pseudo alt-rock ballad “How Are We Alive” and the aptly titled “Peace of Mind”. The final notes are hopeful but not enough to be out of character with the rest of the album.

This record is unapologetic about its East Coast influences, and that’s what really makes me love it. Its the perfect combination of old school boom bap with stream of consciousness rhymes and sardonic wit. D.C. is a place I’ve never played, but if there’s a scene for artists like Educated Consumers, then I’m sure I’d feel right at home there. Go check out the album on the group’s bandcamp and if you’re feeling supportive buy the album for a mere ten dollars, the link is right here just to make it super easy on you: Educated Consumers Bandcamp

Man Danno (a spoonerism of the MCs birth name) is underground hip hop’s military child. Originally hailing from Syracuse, New York, this wordsmith took up temporary existence on the scenes of both Phoenix, Arizona and Oakland, California before laying new roots amongst the prodigious talents of the Seattle hip hop scene. While all the scenery changes may have hindered his ability to take the indie hip hop scene by storm thus far, it has fostered an incredibly diverse style and well honed lyrical arsenal. Whether its stiletto sharp double-time, syncopated rhythmic bounce, or laid-back story-telling, Man Danno brings his own take and energy to a track regardless if its a solo project, one of his numerous guest verses, or alongside his partner Dox as part of Greg & Jerome.

His nomadic lifestyle has left Man Danno with a wealth of tracks created over the last handful of years, and I am proud to say that Fated Empire has become the frequency for their broadcast. On March 11th we will be releasing Violance Armstrong, a retrospective journey through Man Danno’s last five years of wanderlust. Listen to “Waste”, the first song from that project here now though and stay tuned for more info:

And go like his Facebook Artist page here: Man Danno Facebook Page

We’re starting off the New Year with a new release.  Graves 33 and Sarx have combined to form Wings and Wounds and bring you a digital EP for 2012.  You can head on over to the Fated Empire Bandcamp page to download it now by clicking here: Fated Empire Bandcamp. But don’t stop there, while taking part in their weekly secret society meetings and recording sessions, Graves and Sarx allowed a camera for the first time, and produced this video for their single Boundaries Broken:

The EP is name-your-own-price and that price can even be zero dollars.  This EP is a prelude to a full-length album from the duo, out later this year.