Contrary to what their band name suggests, Tour De Force isn't a French band, but the alter ego of Jay Spaker aka. Double Tiger and DJ Q-Mastah (born Quoc Pham), two producers from Brooklyn, New York who in 2012 also founded the Dub Stuy Records label together. For 'Battle Cry' the duo got to work with a number of classic riddims and mixed roots with dubstep. Opener and title track 'Battle Cry' is a killer of a reworking of the Promised Land riddim, 'Pool Party' does the same thing for Sleng Teng and 'Warmongers' is Tour De Force's dubstep-interpretation of the Satta riddim. For the tracks on 'Battle Cry' where the vocals weren't taken care of by Double Tiger, the twosome invited a range of guests from the United States (Jahdan Blakkamoore), the United Kingdom (Brother Culture) and Jamaica (Luciano). A special mention has to go to 'The Traveller', a track for which Tour De Force married dubstep and dub with the heavenly sounds of the West African kora.
A remix version of 'Battle Cry' , for which Tour De Force together with a host of guest producers from around the world revisited the tracks of the album, was also just released. Where the original album only counts 10 tracks, there are no less than 15 remixes on 'Battle Cry Remixed', making it, at the very least, a nice add-on. French duo Ondubground gave 'Old Time Love' a successful UK steppers reworking, New Zealanders Naram added a lot of delicious bleeps to 'Pool Party' and their compatriots of Reality Chant Productions transformed 'Where Do We Go Wrong' feat. Luciano into a nice dubby UK stepper tune. France is actually well represented on 'Battle Cry Remixed', because in addition to Ondubground, people like Brain Damage, Upfull Crew, Fogata and Step-Art all participated as well.
Double release that reggae-wise belongs to the best we already got to hear this year, making it absolutely recommended listening!