Posts Tagged ‘hip hop’
Interview // The Rubberbandits
“Your notes look like the ramblings of a lunatic,” says the man whose face is covered with a knitted replica of a Tesco carrier bag.
Meeting the Rubberbandits for the first time is just as memorable an experience as one would expect – any interview with the Limerick pair is bound to be unpredictable – but the knitted bags is definitely a new one.
The more vocal half of the duo, Mr Chrome, explains the change in look from their usual plastic headgear: “An American fan noticed we had the bags so he knitted us these. We just find them very comfortable, especially when it’s this time of year.
“It’s our first time wearing them. It wouldn’t be a permanent look – it’s like putting the roof up on a convertible, you know?” he points out with no little irony.
“It’s like every now and then you treat yourself by putting on the woollen condom,” adds his cohort, Blindboy Boatclub, helpfully.
Review // Melodica Deathship – The Sunken Path EP
I’ve been listening to a bizarre and frankly unnecessary amount of pirate-themed music recently. Melodica Deathship are more themed around seafaring than piracy – and I kind of over-egged the pirate angle a bit in the review – but it’s a brilliant and thought-provoking EP with so much creativity on show to make a relatively narrow theme work on so many levels.
There aren’t many Irish acts who can claim to be utterly unique – come to think of it, there aren’t many pirate-themed acts who could make the same boast – yet Cork duo Melodica Deathshipachieved just that with their singular 2010 album, Doom Your Cities, Doom Your Towns. The world and its ma has had a go at pirate-themed music at this stage – shanties have been passed around the Irish folk tradition for well over a century and have been most obviously cropped up in the music of the Pogues and soundalike progeny like Flogging Molly, while an entire subgenre of heavy metal has emerged to celebrate the buccaneering spirit. But whereas the majority of nautical music focuses on the rape, pillage and rum-drinking aspect of buccaneering etiquette, Melodica Deathship turn the entire concept on its head in the most subversive way possible.
That Melodica Deathship can so vividly evoke the darkness and isolation inherent in the pirate’s life would be impressive enough, were it not for the fact they do it with hardly a traditional acoustic instrument in sight. The closest they get is frontman Exile Eye’s talismanic melodica (their name is almost stupidly literal) which picks out the mournful, psychedelia-swamped melodies that give their music such an eerie and hazily entrancing quality, like heaving doom metal riffs transposed onto what would otherwise appear the most comical of children’s instruments. Bubbling below and lurching above the surface throughout is producer Deep Burial, whose compositions flit variously between mind-bending heavy dub and ambient hip hop.
Read the full review at Thumped.
Free Music // Melodica Deathship
I’ve been meaning to write about Melodica Deathship for months now (seven to be exact, since I caught them on a monster bill w/ Legion of Two and Drainland at the Lower Deck) without ever really finding an excuse.
Conveniently, then, the Cork rap duo have made their 2010 album, Doom Your Cities, Doom Your Town, available for free download to coincide with their vinyl stock selling out, giving me the perfect reason to wax lyrical on one of the best Irish groups going at the moment.
New Music // Lecs Luther – ‘Dia Dhuit’
Lots of words have been written about Lecs Luther (Alex Chiedu to his ma) already: many of them because he’s the first black rapper from Ireland to make any sort of breakthrough, and that’s interesting, but also because he raps in what is obviously an American accent despite the fact he’s from Dublin and talks just like me (and nobody wants to hear me rap). He’s since responded that his next track will be in Dublinese, but I’m not really sure it’s a bad thing to begin with.
This kind of snobbery tends not to seep into debates about rock music. Few people criticise Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong for singing in a London accent jacked directly from Joe Strummer, and did anybody really think Mick Jagger picked up that southern drawl from ‘Wild Horses’ on the streets of middle class London? It’s a bit weird that rappers would be held to a higher standard.
Republic of Loose // Free download of ‘I Love the Police’
After what had seemed like a fairly subdued promotional campaign, it’s suddenly all happening at Loose HQ.
Up ’til yesterday, all we’d heard of the fourth album Bounce at the Devil was the Ian Brownish lead single ‘The Man,’ but in the past 24 hours we’ve been subject to a barrage of new music from what is indisputably the biggest funk noise to come out of Terenure since that one guy requested the DJ play ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’ at Brady’s.
Yesterday, Nialler9 premiered a dancey number called ‘Satan Bounce (Waltz with Satan & the Mechanical Prostitute)’ on his blog, and today the band have posted a new number called ‘I Love the Police’ for free download in exchange for a tweet or Facebook mention. Also yesterday, the band performed a free gig in the O2 which was helpfully broadcast live online and can be played back now from the phone company’s website.
I’ve only had the chance to listen to the album through once, but it’s definitely a new direction for the band (hardly a shock at this stage) with loads of Madchester, dub and acid dance influences thrown in along with some tasty Irish flute and other curiosities. I’m reserving judgement for now but I have a feeling it’s going to be interesting getting to know the new record.
Bounce at the Devil will hit shops and online stores on October 8.
Update: Kill me now. Just did a search for the James Brown song on Google and it autopredicted ‘Papa’s Got A Brand New Badge’…