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You don’t have to be the world’s biggest hip-hop fan to know that solid beats are the catalyst for incredible success in the genre. Keeping that in mind, Tundra Music Collective come in guns blazing in their new record Rawk On, dishing out supercharged alternative thunder in the title track, “Danger,” “Safe” and the exciting “Suspension of Disbelief.” It’s pretty obvious from the start of this tracklist that Tundra Music Collective could care less about scene politics and the parameters of a modern indie pop format – in this LP, they just want to rock hard. Even the more experimentally-arranged“Kanpe” is a war machine of tone and texture when it counts the most, making this an all-around winner for anyone who digs heavy music intensity.
Rawk On isn’t without depth; the lyricism in “Danger” and “Kanpe” is spot-on poetry, while other songs like “Modified” and “Suspension of Disbelief” demonstrate a classical pop sensibility that could benefit the band on the FM dial. There’s a lot of collective interest in streamlined songwriting in the alternative hip-hop and afrobeat genres right now, particularly among vinyl-obsessed millennials discovering vintage R&B machismo for the first time, and from this perspective, Tundra Music Collective is hitting the spotlight at the right time. They can flex muscle in a verse just as easily as they can with their instrumental prowess, which in itself gives them a slight edge over many of their peers this season.
The tandem attack from the drums and bass in “Safe” and “Rawk On” has an awesome punch to it that reminds me more of American-style grooving than it does anything in the alternative Canadian music world, which is ironic given the other pop-friendly components in both of these songs. This makes it possible to emphasize the physicality of the music without giving the entirety of a composition over the excess in the vein of a straight indie rock song, and for a band that’s more alt-oriented in nature, that’s a pretty compelling use of tonality. Tundra Music Collective has some serious skills, and that’s evident even in a casual listening session with this LP.
I didn’t know about these guys before getting a copy of Rawk On just recently, but I’m going to be looking out for more of their material in the future. This is some excellent frills-free music that doesn’t apologize for its elegance nor its eccentricities, and if it’s providing us with any sort of a preview as to what we can expect out of its creators in the years to come, I think they’re going to find an audience all their own sooner than later. Hip-hop could use more efficient acts like this one, and though there are a lot of intriguing bands putting together hybrid sounds and experimental concepts in 2023, I can’t help but fall in love with a group as committed to keeping the spirit of true alternative music alive as Tundra Music Collective is. To me, this is an act a lot more people need to be talking about at the moment.
Jennifer Munoz
