Underground Fossils is run by Dimxsk and often by Trylemma, who is on a hip hop spiritual journey in the Himalayas and may not be back for a bit. Posts are every Friday, usually some quality old sh*t but sometimes promotional posts or "reviews". We do all we can to make sure we don't post stuff that (1) You can still reasonably buy from the artist directly, (2) You can reasonably buy secondhand for cheap, (3) You can download easily elsewhere, (4) The artist(s) asks us not to for any reason. Rips will include our own personal rips, old scene rips, and random web rips.

Friday, April 26, 2019

Theory 77 (fka Theory) - The Rules of Rust (2007)



This week's release is one close to my heart for sure. Theory 77 is / was a producer / DJ / emcee from Brighton, UK who's signature mix of acoustic folk and blues with indie rap always reminded me of Buck 65 (in a good way). His songs tend to be about things like being in nature, witchcraft, old movies, stories about unique people and of course music itself. His raps are decent, however to me what really shines is his production and especially his skills behind the turntables. Theory is an amazing battle DJ. Not being one myself I may not be the best judge of what is easy or difficult, but in the video below he looks to be absolutely killing it.



Note: The above song is not from The Rules of Rust. It's featured on his last full length vocal work Let's Be Friends. Not my favorite of his but still a fun listen, if you're interested in it let me know, it's not available retail anymore.

I discovered him through CDBaby around 2010 and managed to find all of his albums (excluding Preface, if you have this let me know!). CDBaby sells two of his full length releases here. For All It's Worth is amazing and probably a good place to start, however since it doesn't fit the UGF definition of a 'fossil' as described on our banner, I decided to go with The Rules of Rust.

This album is short but gives a good feel for Theory's personality and sound. Fun, whimsical and introspective, lots of acoustic guitars and blues oriented sampling. As mentioned above, it should appeal to fans of Talkin' Honky Blues era Buck 65, as well as Sage Francis, Adeem, Josh Martinez etc.

Where he is now I don't know. It seemed like for a bit he was going to land on Strange Famous Records, he curated and produced the D(eat)h Mix they have up on SoundCloud. Unfortunately he seems to have stopped recording, I've been on the lookout but a lot of his stuff has disappeared from the net and there seems to be nothing else coming. I know he had a kid, I guess he's a full time dad now. If he sees this he should know I've enjoyed his work, hopefully you will as well!


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