Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This album anticipates the multi-cultural "world music" movement by almost ten years. (Check that date, 1982.) At the very least it was one of a handful of early attempts to exploit that movement, pre-dating Paul Simon's "Graceland" by a good five or six years. (Talking Heads did it too, incorporating African rhythms into their new wave music in the late 70s and early 80s. Then later David Byrne went full tilt multi-culti, with his Brazillian music compilations of the early 90s.)
If you're too young to know who Malcom McClaren is/was -- he's the guy who assembled/managed/invented the Sex Pistols in 1976. He also managed Adam & The Ants in their early days, as well as Bow Wow Wow. Both of those acts were built around the "Burundi Beat" and vaguely Appache tribal rhythms. "Duck Rock" was the first time McClaren put out an album of his own, but he's not really a singer or a songwriter or a musician, or even a record producer. He's an "idea man" and an exploiter of other people's creativity.
His idea here was to mix early East coast hip hop, radio DJ banter, and scratching with African zulu, Brazillian and Carribean music, with layers of Eurocentric strings, lush beds of nu-wave synthesizer and... Appalachian square dance music! The effect is at turns gorgeous, hilarious, ponderous, weird, wonderful, infectious, etc., etc.
Some other reviews here crow about Eminem sampling the song "Buffalo Gals" -- but hundreds of rappers and hip hoppers have sampled "Duck Rock" over the years. (Neena Cherry's "Buffalo Stance"?)
"Duck Rock" is a unique melange of an album - and a first of its kind in many ways. It really is the Sergeant Pepper of hip hop... in my opinion. Others would elaborate and do it better, but "Duck Rock" came first. It's seminal - and judging by the scant number of reviews here, it's been all but forgotten. Pitchfork.com didn't even include it in their Top 100 Albums of The 80s. In my estimation, "Duck Rock" belongs in the top 5, easily, in terms of influential albums of the 80s.
McClaren's subsequent albums weren't as interesting or relevant.
Produced by sampling maverick Trevor Horn (Yes, Buggles, Art Of Noise, ABC, Propaganda, Seal) who deserves as much of the credit as McClaren for this brilliant album. Maybe more. All of his best ideas (Art Of Noise most notably) were arrived at in the process of making the ground-breaking "Duck Rock".
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