Spectre is back with his fourth album of new material, and this time his trademark dark, brooding atmosphere is leavened a bit by more energetic beats and lively interpolations of exotic foreign musical elements. After a pair of brief and unnecessary introductory tracks,
Psychic Wars gets down to serious business with "Valour," which nicely fuses a sort of hip-hop/trip-hop beat to North African instrumental samples, to very nice effect. "Rolling Force" takes a similar approach, using sampled orchestral strings. One of the album's highlights is "Secrets," a dubbed-up hip-hop number that benefits greatly from the presence of vocalist Honeychild (heard previously as part of
Raz Mesinai's
Badawi project) and from the mixing genius of
Pere Ubu alumnus Tony Maimone. Things bog down a bit after that; the cameo appearances by
Sensational are both less than inspired, but "Remembrance" raises the temperature again. Overall, this album is just further proof that Brooklyn is, indeed, the world capital of experimental and progressive hip-hop and general off-kilter beat wizardry. Recommended. ~ Rick Anderson