Oliver!: Katch 22 - Biting The Hand That Feeds (4 April 1992)

“The Katch is back!”

Yes, they were and given Peel’s appreciation of everything coming off the Kold Sweat label, I can imagine that Katch 22’s Return to the Fundamentals EP must have been one of his most highly anticipated releases of the month.  He may have felt a little shortchanged at the resulting disc offering up just one “new” track together with a batch of instrumentals and remixes from the Diary of a Blackman Living in the Land of the Lost album.  Over a killer drum pattern and samples that conjure up 60s slasher movies, Biting the Hand That Feeds continues the themes of that earlier album - the constriction of opportunity for black people and how black assimilation into white society can equal black submission. Touching on themes as widespread as capitalism, genocide, cultural displacement, family breakup, slavery and poverty, it’s  all a bit scattershot until a storming final 90 seconds brings the track home.  I like it, but if Biting the Hand That Feeds is the tubthumper, the remix of State of Meditation is a better attempt at raising the awareness in its listener as to why a revolution may be needed.



Videos courtesy of Kove Graff and U3.