Call him DarkoTheMastermind, Doc Heller or Dwarf Nebula, either way you’d be correct. The many personas of Evan Souza all feature a unique sound with a little bit of familiarity (due to it being the same person, obviously). Just as many before him (see Madlib and MF DOOM – who happens to be his biggest inspiration), many personas can be a fun and different thing to enhance your number of creative outlets.
DarkoTheMastermind is similar to Dwarf Nebula, if you will. Witty, humorous and extraneously abstract, this emcee/producer is a mix of modern hip hop artist and futuristic insane-o. Shots of trance and electronica mix with an almost Beastie Boy-like persona. It’s not very common for rappers to spit over spacey electronic music, but DarkoTheMastermind is a mastermind after all.
I’ll be straight with it – the rhymes essentially ruin the album. The beats themselves are so creative and so funky. When Darko rhymes over the beats, it’s as if a little kid grabbed a karaoke microphone and started whiling out without even reading the lyrics. Awkward flows, pointless rhymes and cringe-worthy attempts at varied vocal ranges are just the biggest items on the laundry list of faults with the rhymes on the album. But I can see past that and enjoy the production for the greatness that it possesses.
Thick electronica with raggedy effects and glitchy sound bits contribute to a very futuristic sound that I believe DarkoTheMastermind was reaching for. If it weren’t for the vocals, An Abstract Journey Through Space On the Funkmobile would have been a great instrumental album. Perhaps Darko will gift us with a full electronica album, minus the vocals, as his next effort. Until then, we can jam out to the extraterrestrial sounds of An Abstract Journey Through Space On the Funkmobile.
5.5/10
