Fire Rec. 
Sphyr : A Poem For M (CAN,2003)****
I bought a few Fire records and Acuarela albums and a couple of other sell-outs rather cheaply, for which the Fire records albums still stands out. Also Sphyr is a remarkable album, in a very unusual style, not sure if this has been tried before. This will be the first ever review of mine of an album with relation to hip-hop, a genre I usually hate a lot for its vulgarity (in content and in consciousness especially) and for its inferior ideas towards the voice and music (-however I can stand the humour in Eminem for instance, an outsider in its field to a degree-). Derek Stephens more is like a beat poet who takes his black voice from hip-hop to beat poetry to spoken word of literature and half singing with the slower rhythms and longer vibrations with more melody, with more variations and ear to what could happen. The accompaniment or another element is led by Spanish or classical guitar, flute improvisations and moody or dialoguing and more melodic accordion. This turns the “rap” effect much closer towards the acid folk territory with just that extra touch of sonic ranges of attention. (I didn’t dig the lyrics well enough yet). Occasionally the band leans to triphop/postrock in an acoustic version. The band was set up by guitarist Ohad Benchetrit and drummer David Mitchell, both also members of the Canadian post-rock instrumentalists ‘Do Make Say Think’ together with accordionist Milos Popovic and beat-poet Derek Stephens.
