Music Review for Palien Vasion’s “Dakonda feat. Merkules”

The most noticeable element of this track is that opening vocal. It’s a brand new voice, original, with something hugely unique about it – a brand new character for hip-hop fans to become addicted to. The laid back nature of the performance is intriguing, as the ideas are quite serious and dark sounding – there’s attitude, but it’s not screamed at you, it’s presented confidently and calmly, which is far more effective.

On a musical level, the beat that opens the track is pretty classic sounding, nothing hugely breathtaking about the backing track – but the piano part is intense, it’s quite haunting, and really effective – once you’ve heard it, you can’t unhear it. It seems to reach out from the track and wind itself further and further into your mind. It seems to get louder and louder actually, the further you progress into the music. Fortunately this element drops out during the opening verse, leaving enough space for you to listen to the lead vocal. You also get a fair few different voices and moments in this track, so it feels like a real event, a lot of involvement, a lot of character.

The vocal featured in the second verse adds this quick fire performance that really mixes things up. Everything seems to be cranked up a few gears from this point onwards. You miss a few lyrics the first time, but if you love hip-hop; you’ll listen again. It has everything you need for this kind of track to be powerful, the piano riff makes it stand out from a lot of similar music. There wasn’t anything massively gripping about any of the lyrics, but the performances were flawless; both artists have great flow, and really unusual vocal characteristics, which is great – there’s always room to say more in future tracks.

By Rebecca Cullen