Wednesday 19 December 2012

Review: Ghostpoet

Ghostpoet Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam (Brownswood Recordings)


Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam is one of the most unique and fully-formed British grime albums that I have heard in a long time. Why? It's a story of everyday British culture and the depressing truth about urbananised societies, seen through the observant eyes of a true writer. You don't get many of those these days.

Despite the fact that he delves into various deep topics on the LP, Ghostpoet has an exceedingly dreamy approach to both life and the way he raps, as we can see from his sleepy delivery, which draws you further and further into the album as you want to know more about the influences and reasonings behind his music. We see a prime example of this on the track 'I Just Don't Know' where he declares that "Other MCs want to talk about crime, but that ain't me." but then throws you completely off guard with a rather gleeful chorus that you instinctively want to sit and hum along to. This approach is seen throughout the entire album which I find very intriguing, as it's the sort of thing that Mike Skinner experimented with in the early days of The Streets, so let's just hope that Ghostpoet continues in this direction.

Don't be dissuaded by his spectacles and nice hats, this by far one of the most influential albums of 2011, particularly in terms of the UK underground scene. I hope you think so too.

Monday 17 December 2012

Album Review: My Teenage Dream Ended by Farrah Abraham

Farrah Abraham My Teenage Dream Ended (MTV Press)


Imagine a world wherein music is artless. You turn on your radio, you hear the exact same thing over and over again. There's no joy to be had in listening to music, and no joy in producing it either. It's product. You are a market.

Many people seem to assert this dystopian existence as our present, and they point to a number of examples - Rebecca Black and Katie Price are among those - to suggest that music is dead. I would disagree with this notion entirely; crap music has always existed, and as long as there is a market for it, it will continue to exist. The rest of us will have been pleased with the last 12 months, as they have yielded some exceptional works, whatever your musical persuasion may be. Artful music, shockingly enough, still exists. And, as with crap music, it always has done. And most likely always will.

I'm sitting here listening to My Teenage Dream Ended with a solitary thought: WTF. This is the album released by Farrah Abraham, a "star" of the MTV reality programme Teen Mom. My knowledge of her existence prior to listening to this album was extraordinarily vague, but from what I gather having read a few articles, she has had a pretty tough time throughout her life. My Teenage Dream Ended is the musical accompaniment to the book of the same name, but the thing about this piece of music is just how divisive it has become, and how finely it treads the line between crap and artful.

There are two distinct viewpoints when approaching My Teenage Dream Ended. There is the, "what the hell is this shit turn it off NOW" approach, and the "this is actually kinda meaningful" approach. Let me explain; the former is justifiable by how little musicianship is on display here. Abraham's vocals have been crushed and discombobulated by the Auto-Tune software, to the point where her lyrics are practically indecipherable amidst the backdrop of hastily composed brostep and electropop nonsense. You wonder whether it's all a joke, or if Abraham actually meant this for serious digestion.

Conversely, the latter approach is also understandable. For a reality show "star" (there's those inverted commas again), My Teenage Dream Ended is a shockingly abrasive piece of art, and far beyond what is to be expected of a trashy product of consumerism. The music, on paper, sounds far too contemporary to have such an effect, but in practice, the wobble-bass and programmed drums are disjointed and ill-fitting, especially when they are set against the grating extremity of the vocals.

The lyrics are, on surface level, teeny bop cannon fodder, but closer examination reveals something a lot more sinister than initially expected. On opener The Phone Call That Changed My Life, Abraham admits that, "I can only put so much in a song," as if there is something she is hiding behind the crescendo of disjointed clatter and the inhumane Auto-Tuned smush. Further reading reveals that the song was written after Abraham was informed about the death of her baby's father, Derek Underwood. Haunting indeed.

My Teenage Dream Ended is an undeniably shocking album, and should you put yourself through its half-hour of music, I can guarantee that you will not have heard anything of its like before. I would err on the side of classifying this album as outsider art (think The Shaggs for a musical reference point), but I would totally understand anybody who finds the album to be an obnoxious waste of 30 minutes. As such, I don't feel I can really rate this album, so I won't; I shall instead leave it to you to decide.

Retrospectives: Radiohead

Radiohead Kid A (Parlophone)


Rarely do I band about the word 'perfect'. It is used far too much among my generation to describe trivial, mundane things; hairstyles, items of clothing, et cetera. Rarer yet do I use the word to describe music - for me, to call something perfect is to hold it so highly, nothing compares, nothing comes close. It is likely it will never be done again, a once-in-a-lifetime moment, a dream becoming reality. Superlatives needn't apply to Kid A; it doesn't need them. As far as I'm concerned, this is that perfect piece of music.

Why do it regard it so? I have a number of reasons. This is the sound of a revolution; Radiohead, a 'guitar' band that were tired of the gruelling touring and the bloated expectations, a band that was experiencing an agonising hangover from their past successes. They recognised this - continuing in the vein of OK Computer was going to kill them. So they destroyed themselves, and their defining 90s sound, and they became so much more; havoc and harmony, regret, false hope, distilled into 50 minutes of relatively guitar-less music.

The 'rock' hooks, the riffs, were abandoned, and instead listeners are greeted with a chilling synth organ, complete with a hidden bass track (revealed to those in possession of a high-fidelity stereo system), and the warped voice of Thom Yorke, akin to a fish writhing around above water, gasping for air, begging. "Everything, In It's Right Place" - somehow, it doesn't seem that way, as side one track one reveals yet more eerie depths as it progresses. Kid A follows; a lullaby, a warm duvet, a dream, smothered with a vocoder.

The National Anthem immediately drags you back into reality, providing a sharp needle for your dreamworld balloon, in the form of a ferocious bassline, and a freestyle jazz band that swarms like a colony of wasps. How To Disappear Completely proceeds to drag you back under; a track that bears resemblance to former Radiohead glories, filled with soothing strings. The ambient Treefingers ends side one, and at first it comes of as a calming relief, only to bear more haunting aspects upon close inspection - you can hear muffled cries for help, as if the song has something sinister lurking beneath the surface.

Side two begins with Optimistic; "finally, an anthem!" you may say, although the lyrics seem to be cynical, taunting even: "Try the best you can, the best you can is good enough" Yorke jeers, with what appears to be sarcasm, false optimism. In Limbo follows with a stream of arpeggios, overlapped by pleas, "I'm lost at sea, don't bother me", before crashing to a close, in a wave of alien beams. Idioteque picks up the pieces, with a thudding, jarring beat that echoes Aphex Twin and Bjork, and a strained synth line. "Women and children first" foreshadows a mushroom-cloud apocalypse, where humanity is at odds with itself once again. The screech of the strings segue into Morning Bell; another song that can identify itself with the Radiohead of yore, yet feels like an entirely spookier direction altogether. Finally, the journey culminates in Motion Picture Soundtrack, a song that predates hit single Creep, blossoms into life with an organ and harp, only to shrink back into nothingness, with the ever cryptic, "I will see you, in the next life". The hidden track, believed to be called Genchildren, follows, with a soaring ascension into the musical heavens.

Make no mistake, Kid A is not to be appreciated as background noise. This is not an album you can rock out to on your mates speakers; this requires careful attention. Give it this, and it transcends anything you may consider to be music - it becomes an emotional journey, a rollercoaster of highs and lows. An inhuman, yet oddly familiar fantasy world, represented by 50 minutes of digital sound waves pressed onto a compact disc (or whatever platform you may choose).

That, dearest readers, is the sound of perfection.

(Not So) Retrospectives: Death Grips

A name on the lips of many a music blogger, and fans of music in general, is Death Grips, the alternative hip-hop outfit (comprised of Stefan "MC Ride" Burnett, and producers Zach Hill and Andy Morin) that has dealt with a fair amount of controversy in the past few days and months. Following the April release of The Money Store, the groups major label debut, it became clear that they were certainly worth keeping an eye out for, especially considering they had teased at No Love, the follow-up album, which was to be released in the fall. No Love became No Love Deep Web, and the album was cryptically teased further through a series of archive files, that revealed details about the release in Braille, QR code, and Morse, but to name a few. It quickly became one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year, but the saga took a turn for the stranger when record label Epic allegedly pushed the release back to 2013. The group took issue with this, and in one of the most daring stances against a major label ever, No Love Deep Web was self-released by Death Grips on October 1. To top off the controversial manner of its release, the artwork was revealed to be an erect phallus, complete with the album's title Sharpied onto it. No Love Deep Web has had over 30 million legal downloads since its release, and in the past few days, the group have been dropped by Epic, in a move that suprised nobody. So, here's to Death Grips; 2012's most brilliant troublemakers. Oh, and the albums are pretty good as well.


The Money Store

Following Exmilitary, the 2011 mixtape, Death Grips were an exciting prospect, and with The Money Store, they just about fulfilled all of their promises. To describe the album, one could only use the word harsh; from the production to the lyrics, The Money Store is brash, often alienating, but always thrilling. And in a world filled with prima donna popstars and "rappers", the album is an adrenaline rush, and a wildly exciting experience. The production is abrasive and loud, with an eclectic range of influences, from rave to techno, to DnB to electro. Lyrics deal with racial issues, paranoia, and an age of materialism, particularly in closer Hacker, where pop culture references are dropped at will - MC Ride shouts that Gaga can't handle this shit, after claiming he will make your waters break in the Apple store - and it flows as a stream of consciousness, off-the-top-of-the-head piece of writing. The album is an outpouring of rage, and is gleefully unfocused in doing so. Overall then, The Money Store remains one of the calendar year's most essential listens, and is certainly a contender for album of the year. For any fans of Exmilitary worried about the group going pop following their major record deal, The Money Store is a chaotic, angry affirmation that they needn't fret.




No Love Deep Web 

In the aftermath of The Money Store, you could be forgiven for being excited about No Love Deep Web, the second album released by Death Grips in 2012. The downright bizarre, albeit innovative, promotion of No Love Deep Web only heightened the hype surrounding it. Just as it seemingly reached fever pitch, the albums release date was pushed back to 2013; the rest, as was explained in the opening paragraph, is history. So, here we have the single most controversial release of the year, in all its glory. How does it stack up against its predecessor? As it turns out, the group can be even more angry; the album is fairly sample-less, with dark Roland drum machine sounds being the key component of the production, and the production certainly feels a little colder, aggressive even, for it. Lyrics are, true to form, shouty and brimming with anger; suicide seems to be a constant running throughout No Love Deep Web, as MC Ride asks you to "Die with me/ Blow out the lights, take your life/ Ride the falling sky with me". He also comes across as quite fierce, more so than ever, providing quotables such as "I'm the coat hanger in your man's vagina", found on track Deep Web. No Love Deep Web is an undeniably riotous listen, and although it doesn't match the sheer inventiveness of The Money Store, it is intriguing nonetheless, and well worth the free download.

Review: Mikill Pane


Mikill Pane The Dirty Rider EP (Mercury Records)


Mikill Pane's new EP combines various features from his previous releases, and has created what I believe to be his best non-collaboration EP as of yet. 'The Craig Bang' is a convivial, too-fast-to-function track, which is a huge leap forward for the UK rap scene in itself considering that tracks from most leading grime artists usually consist of generic GarageBand style beats and lazy flows, and that's before even mentioning the lyrical content. This genius lyricist is going to be absolutely huge in 2013 with the release of his debut album Blame Miss Barclay; as he so kindly put it, "I'm zipping up the charts like I'm YKK". Take a listen and you'll be thanking me later, I promise.

Sunday 16 December 2012

Review: Kanye West

Kanye West Kanye West Presents G.O.O.D. Music Cruel Summer (G.O.O.D. Music)



For me, Kanye West has always been on a level above 95% of all other MC's/music producers, he's essentially the creme-de-la-creme of modern day hip-hop, and in my eyes, he's truly changed the scene for good. He made a statement recently, claiming that he releases 'perfect music', and instead of getting reactions from other rappers such as "what the flying f*** is this guy talking about?", most merely wondered why he hadn't made the statement earlier on in his career.

Cruel Summer is Kanye's first "crew album" due to the collaboration with his G.O.O.D. Music affiliates, and although the wait was long and there are only 12 tracks on the album, it is well worth the suffering. Artists that feature on the album include 'Kanye's G.O.O.D. inner circle' (Pusha T, 2 Chainz, Kid Cudi and Big Sean), and various other MC's from the record label, with some guest appearances from Jay-Z (surprise surprise), R Kelly and Jadakiss.

Personally, I was a little bummed out to find out that Bon Iver and Mos Def wouldn't be featuring on the album, and that they were to be replaced with unheard-of musical virgins such as Cyhi The Prince and Ma$e, who sounded truly amateur when put next to such huge names in the world of hip-hop, but I suppose that Kanye can't get everything right. Another disappointment was the fact that 4 out of the 12 tracks (Clique, Mercy, New God Flow and Cold) had already been released as singles previous to the public release of Cruel Summer, meaning that I felt a little bit ripped off by one of my all time favourite musicians. However, enough of the negatives, let's take a look at the ins and outs of this masterpiece.

“New God Flow” is an iconic track on the album as it contains various different musical genres, but blends them all together in a heavenly manner to create a sensual musical smoothie. It's a song that tries to establish itself as a showcase of lyricism, and with Kanye, Pusha T and the infamous Ghostface Killah on the track, you know that it can only end with an orgasm of the eardrums. Kanye's egocentric nature comes through in his minute-long rap soliloquy, and with lyrics such as "went from most hated to the champion God flow, I guess that's a feeling only me and Lebron know", you start to question whether anyone can top this unstoppable MC. There are other masterpieces that shine through on the album, but I think that in the latter half, every artist seems to be trying to mark their own mark on the song instead of playing off of one another’s strengths, and in tracks such as "Sin City", you notice that it just sounds like a desperate scramble for attention.

Taking everything into account, I think that there will be an awful lot to come from the G.O.O.D. Music record label in the near future, and Yeezy has done an unquestionably good job as a Jedi-master figure, teaching his padawans the way of the force (I watch too much Star Wars okay).