Lifesavas - Gutterfly

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Free Music Notes for Gutterfly

Free Music Review: Solid Sophomore Album
Hit: 4 Stars

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Gutterfly's narrative includes 14 tracks with a thread of interludes, and traces the fictional deeds of a trio of ghetto superheroes - Bumpy Johnson (played by VURS as if his life depended on it), Sleepy Floyd (a character wholly inhabited by JUMBO) and Jimmy Slimwater (personified by SHINES) - who fight their way out of the perilous confines of a mythologized Portland, Razorbade City, in a way that's reminiscent of the creation myth behind many a great hip-hop partnership in the history of the genre (from Outkast to Tribe Called Quest). Inspired by an obscure, long-forgotten film project from the `80s of the same name, Gutterfly draws its source material not only from Baraka Feldman's original concept but also from the blaxploitation films of the `70s, such as "Coonskin" and the Zatoichi series of Japanese cult films, and the desire to shatter fans' expectations about what Lifesavas represent.

"With this album we thought `let's just go back to me and JUMBO, the things we liked back in the day, the way it was when we first started out,'" says VURSATYL. The opportunity was there for us to say something really human with this record. And we tried to use the umbrella of the story to play with identity a little bit - it gave us the freedom to say things we might not have, otherwise." "Being able to talk about these issues, in character, allowed us to get real free with it," JUMBO relates. ""VURS calls me the visionary cause I can see things before they happen, when we creatin' ya know?" "I thought it would be fly just to jump into this character to show you who I am in my real life, then merge that with the movie script. We ended up doing it backwards, but you still get both sides of the coin that way."

"JUMBO's funny, he thinks about everything in reverse," laughs VURS about his partner. "Sometimes it'll be the complete opposite of what I'm thinking, and I'll just have to pick up on what he's laying down and go with it. Gutterfly is the story of our deprivation: the ghetto is desolation, it's poverty, and me and JUMBO have been around each other all our lives, and were like `how can we make it up outta here?' We wanted to do something just for us, something we'd dig, that would make the second record more interesting to do. We threw caution to the wind."

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