Hello all you beautiful shining people. For my post this Tuesday I've chosen to speak a bit about Grand Disaster, the collaborative effort between SoCal emcee and Gutter Water Music members Castor Pollux and also Dustin Hodges, who I'd never heard about until now but will keep an ear out for in the future. I've been a fan of Pollux since purchasing his Guts & Garbage: A Collection of Shit (it's really not but who am I to argue?) on CDBaby and I've been accumulating his music ever since. A gritty vocal style mixed with a conscious and enlightened worldview over dope and oftentimes unusual production from folks like J.Dankworth and DJ Zero One make Pollux a rap fans dream. He keeps his style rooted in that golden era sound while delivering, always, a dose of his own unique and charismatic personality with every song.
I made the decision to look at this work on UGF because after purchasing it he hit me up and sent me a free copy of this album as a physical CD, no charge just as a thank you and a pleasant surprise for a plague era weekend. So dude is seriously on the level, and I figured he deserved some, while admittedly humble, still free and real promotion from Underground Fossils. In addition I asked for a bit about the album that I could publish straight from the rappers pen to your computer screen. What he delivered is absolutely perfect and I certainly couldn't do better, so without further ado here's Castor Pollux on Grand Disaster:
"Grand Disaster is a collaborative effort from Dustin Hodges and Castor Pollux. The 2 have been in collaboration and friendship for over 15 years which made this album more real-a-vent with the content. The oldest song “Grand Disaster” being about 4 years old while the newest song “Levee Breaks” was written and recorded in 2019. The 2 have built a trusted process of creation building in studios together for their first few projects. So when D transferred to Northern Cali from Long Beach, the 2 had no issues creating and still moving forward with music. Beats Rhymes and Life is not a Hip Hop cliche with these 2 as you can hear in this project.
With features from Declaime aka Dudley Perkins on “Let it Fly” & Ill Camille on “Breath” the album has a hopeful and yet honest vibe set in reality and passion.
Mr. Crowley and Mark Cavett appear on “It is Just you” which seems colder but really is honest in care with motivation and wisdom as life requires you to act and create action. It is just you!
The album also ends with a classic Hip Hop remix of “Changing” from Hyphen Select who also book ends the album with a verse and the line “in this present moment which is presently ascending”.
Grand Disaster is a piece dedicated to the moments in life that are maybe the most destructive but yet ending in the grandest vision of ourselves we couldn't have ever imagined without said Disaster. Losing a job to find an innate skill to create an income, going through a divorce to find true love. Whatever your Grand Disaster moment I’m sure you will find a lyric or sound scape which creates a mirror of self reflection. This album is collected experiences projected with creative visual word play and wide ranging emotional beats. A musical meditation journal of 2 Dharma Bums honoring their humanness while claiming their greatness.
It's a Grand Disaster, learn from mistakes and come back just to smash it!" - Castor Pollux
Now my impressions of this album come both as a long time fan of Pollux and as an amateur rap critic. One thing I can say for sure is that as he gets older Pollux continues to view life as a journey of discovery and makes use of his experiences and struggles to write damn good poetry. "Free Range" is actually one of my favorites and is a sort of stream of consciousness meditation on art, spirituality and the experience of being a human being engaged in both. "Smiling Faces" touches on the fabricated happiness we see every day and warns about what might be behind those shiny veneers and urges caution. "Levee Breaks" is more in line with the Grand Disaster theme and discusses who we turn to when things fall apart, before we've seen the benefit of our own personal disaster.
Hodges production is absolutely on point, and the two couldn't go better together. Smooth and jazzy with hard hitting drums and a dreamlike quality that creates a timeless sonic experience. Absolutely perfect for the frankly adult musings of Pollux, and dope enough to offer some enjoyment for even the least dedicated and most casual listener. I will most certainly stay up on Dustin Hodges and suggest you do the same. Beautiful work here.
Grand Disaster is one of the most mature rap albums I've heard lately. It presents as a deeply cynical yet in some strange way playful picture of life as we know it, with a beauty and "heart" (get it?) that's refreshing and rewarding to listen to. I think almost anyone should be able to appreciate something about this album, and while there certainly isn't any one single or sound that would be at home in the club or at a party, this album is chock full of late night meditation and emotional journey soundtracks for the thinking rap consumer.
I wanted to do a review this week since I haven't done one recently. Castor Pollux and Dustin Hodges are cool folks and you should support them. See y'all Friday!
Get Grand Disaster here, support humans and awesome artists!
(note: copy pasting his quote did some serious f*ckery to my format and I can't be sure this will post the way I wanted, so I hope it works... if not then I'm sorry and I'm already on fixing it.)
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