Japanese Man: Oh heavens, what is that?

Police Officer: I do not know... but don't you really wanna dance like fuck right now? And have a blunt while we're at it?

Japanese Man: Yes. Hell Yes.

Ladies and gentleman, Knifehandchop has awoken. Spewing raga and atomic gabber madness from the Canadian wilderness and sending the hot jams straight down the back of your throat, Knifehandchop has quietly been building towards world domination. This kid actually gave Bounty Killer cred, by mixing some of the guy's wack-ass rhymes from the Blade soundtrack into his Dhyana Records debut, "Bounty Killer Killer," a track so hot it'd make your grandmother throw down on the dancefloor. And it was Knifehandchop's copyright-burning, radio smashing "Dancemix 2000"-- a song that makes Eminem the target of a teen-princess gangbang, with samples of Pink, Destiny's Child and the sad little boy from Detroit thrown all over fuzzed-out four/four breaks and the Vengaboys-- that got recycled by Kid606 into his latest album.

Knifehandchop (aka Billy Pollard) is from the same neighborhood as Venetian Snares and the Tigerbeat6 posse (Kid606, Lesser, DJ/Rupture), but probably spends most of his time inside getting high and watching BET. And writing some of the phattest boombonic tracks ever heard, too. But with so much going for him, it's sad that only about half of TKO from Tokyo, his second release on the Tigerbeat6 label, is concrete proof of it. Comprised mostly of remixes by other Tigerbeat6 artists, TKO is bland in spots and brilliant in others, exposing both the strengths and limitations of his sound over the course of seven tracks.

The opener, "'Taking the Soul Out of Music' vs 'Vertical'", mashes up two other Knifehandchop tracks: the throaty ragamuffin rhymes of "Vertical" cuts seamlessly with the insane raver bounce of "Taking the Soul Out of Music"'s air-raid siren percussion. The track is a fresh reworking of Pollard's material, and its sources fare much better than "Bounty Killer Killer", which is the subject of two remixes on this record's b-side. The first, by Kid606, does little more than pitch-shift and transpose the vocals, eventually slowing them to a crawl before the track peters out. The kid also lays down an interesting new drum pattern as the track opens, but it doesn't even match up to the vocals, and the whole track ends up sounding like something I wrote with Audiomulch drunk. The following remix, this one by DJ Aneurysm, works better, starting off with some jazzy hi-hats before morphing into fuzzed-out hip-hop breaks. This is Def Jux territory-- abrasive hip-hop structure with an emphasis on the noise-- but it never really takes off. Even Venetian Snares, whose contribution "Not for the Billy" wraps the source track's synthline around some typical Snares crack-your-spine breaks, doesn't get much done.

So it's up to Knifehandchop to steer this record out of the sea and headlong into the fleeing masses. Aside from the opener, he's responsible for two other tracks. The first, a blunted remix of his newest single, "Hooked on Ebonics", is a-list party material. Dig that loping bassline, the bling-bling MTV catchphrases throughout, the Atari bleeps. Hell, even Ja Rule hollas on this track (that motherfucker is everywhere). It's no surprise that "I Hate Your Fucking Face", the second of Knifehandchop's solo cuts, sticks with the hip-hop-- Knife knows how to bend the genre to his will. Utilizing elements from the RZA's Bobby Digital in Stereo jam "Domestic Violence", Knifehandchop constructs a gabber piledriver that, after a few listens, sounds downright poignant. A tell-tale piano line, low in the mix, backs a looped RZA rhyme ("Your pussy ain't shit/ Your ass ain't shit/ Girl, you ain't shit") as the drums pound it into dust. It's a standout piece, and even as the rest of the record sags and falters, it reminds you why you bought the damn thing in the first place: because Knifehandchop is fucking ace.

-Mark Martelli, September 12th, 2002