Label: Muti Music
Released: 2008

01. Colours
02. Irma Vep (Feat. Masia One)
03. Collateral Damage
04. Eggplantation
05. Sweatshop
06. Have Dreadlox, Will Travel
07. The Skizza
08. Scratchdisc
09. Heads n Tails (ill.gates Mix)
10. Prickles n Goo
11. Adaggio For Disney Hall And Coffee Grinder
12. Net Neutrality Rantapella
13. Irma Vep (Original Mix)

Ill.gates is a producer from Toronto (Canada), known previously from act called The Phat Conductor. I'll say it directly: his debut album, titled "Autopirate" and released in American label Muti Music, already during the first listening to it bowl the listener over with its excellent technique. Ill.gates - supported in the album creation by guest participation of eleven other musicians in another tracks, from which the biggest involving goes to Meesha, the co-writer of four tracks - is an artist technically great and each other opinion on this topic will be simply a blatant lie. His CD lasts exactly 55 minutes and contains thirteen well done tracks, which sound leak out from many styles of music; of course the electronic sphere is the core of everything what was made for the album. "Autopirate" is a sum up of breakbeat, dubstep, electro, techno and experiments, but also of - attention, please - hip hop and grime.

The album, from the perspective of the masses, will be noticed mainly thanks to rap conventions contained here. In this theme two-faced track called "Irma Vep" is a production that presents hip hop absolutely. And while a wild female rap from the second track looks like, at the background of arrangement, more danceable in comparision with the original composition from the thirteenth track and there contained frugal male rap, then both vocals are the same striking as well as effective addition to that technically great background. (I won't concern to lyrics of these tracks, it's completely unimportant in the case of this album due to the fact, album's music focus on other things). Aside from these two compositions, the others plays in the team of a fully electronic overtone, where vocal is supplement at most, and where ill.gates (original name of the project starts from a small letter) put forward diversity of such a kind, that - so to speak - easy tagging of music isn't easy, luckily. Although I must admit, type of involving a regular vocal we also have on the track named "Prickles n Goo". But from my own perspective the composition is very ambiguous and for sure not so formal as those hip hop's ill.gates' propositions. That's the song, but spiced with unusually sophistication. Rainy, melancholic female singing greatly become part of phenomenal dynamic breakbeat arrangement with guitar notes, where manipulated by electronica sounds almost fly around us. Chapeau bas!

However, there's even a better composition: initial "Colours". Only pluses here, and the biggest ones are: strong bass (its vibrated parts are simply marvellous), a bit nostalgic melodic pattern (quite unusual as for the context of another tracks) and jumping rhythm. Everything is linked perfectly harmoniously here. That's the album gold and the best possibly start to it from the first second. And next: hip hop stylistic, though unvocal, is "Eggplantation" and "Heads n Tails (ill.gates Mix)" as well, "Collateral Damage" has the most stunning contortions under the breakbeat age on this album, "Sweatshop" is energetic and steady dubstep with a peremptory synthesizer as the main, "Have Dreadlox, Will Travel" is electro and breakbeat in melody, "The Skizza" is a breakbeat frenzy, and "Scratchdisc" is a party with plenty scratches and samples with a breakbeat moisturized by house. Moreover, there's also two tracks here that break out from above musical scales. "Adaggio For Disney Hall And Coffee Grinder" is a massively energetic technocentrism of dubstep. While "Net Neutrality Rantapella" is a game of spokens, in a fast tempo another lines (f.e. by George W. Bush jr) are intelligently get glued together in theme of internet. Nice manipulation.

"Autopirate" is a dynamic dynamite. The tracks are highly danceable and clubby, but danceable and clubby also in that positive meaning, that even for lone home ear makes a big pleasure to listen to them due to ill.gates' technical idealism: everything is polished, arrangements are very frequently broken and expanded with a multiplicity of different samples. There's no nausea, there's power and freshness. Emotional depth is in minority here, but, after all, already the styles here contained, or rather the majority of them, speaks for themselves. In that whole clubby nature you can also discover futuristic elements - the first seconds of "Prickles n Goo" are the pure maximization of technicisation, and f.e. "Adaggio For Disney Hall And Coffee Grinder" is, as the entire one, a robotizated affirmation of that. Personally, I think highly of "Colours" and "Prickles n Goo" due to beautiful balance between the depth and technical bravura.