Amon Tobin meets Joe “Doubleclick” Chapman in Brighton, UK and they decide they want to work together. On an album. An album which will transcend genres like a sandwich transcends food groups. UK MC Sway hears all about it, wants to join in the fun and flys to them in Canada to lay down the vocals on this project (the meat in the sub!). And thus Two Fingers released Two Fingers which is good for web optimisation if nothing else.

Moody, atmospheric and eclectic, the sounds on this album draw from hip hop, DnB, grime and some more abstract, industrial sounds, well exemplified on first track Straw Men, alt.hip.hop for sure, the discordant, spooky backing track infiltrated with ghostly wails as Sway’s low-fi, smooth rapping are perfectly offset, like having a rap song secretly whispered in your ears as you walk through a tinned pineapple factory.

Two Fingers the titular track, with a driving, endlessly morphing, snarling bassline carries on this heavy industrial theme, Sway cleverly appelating his way in to the track with off centre spits. Angry tune, the piss being taken out of huge swathes of the rap scene with savage disdain.

Sometime Missy Elliot protégé Ms. Jade joins in for Doing my Job, a low tempo track, she huskily raps like a beat-poet with a side of southern playatasticness that’s difficult to listen to without a bit of head bobbing.
And that, I think, is probably the best way to describe this album. It’s unusual, unexpected and at times disconcertingly aggressive in tone but there’s not a track on there that doesn’t have a catchy riff that makes you want to move. Some of it’s so abstract you’re not really sure if you like what you’re hearing (though it grows on you) but it still gets you moving like good music should.
High Life, for example, is a hard-core grime tune with electro notes and a heavy bassline that’s shades of Dillinja but, you know, what the hell, has an instrumental break 30 seconds in and electrolises Sway’s voice, halfway through, in to the backing track which shouldn’t work but does, and well, a device employed elsewhere to equally good effect.

Spanning genres, or more properly just ignoring them, this is a work that’s out of the box. I really enjoyed it, and some of it’s going on to high rotation for sure, but there is the feeling, slightly, that it might be just a little too frenetic, a little too out there, to sit easily with the average punter who might appreciate the tracks in isolation but will struggle with a whole LP of them (and by struggle I mean turn it off and walk away.) Tobin’s name on this album gives it a verified stamp of quality, and Sway adds the guarantee of sweet verbalisation, though neither of their previous works will prepare you for this. Have no fear.