Issue 154 - Flowdan

DIRECTORS & CO-FOUNDERS

THOMAS FROST tom@crackmagazine.net

JAKE APPLEBEE jake@crackmagazine.net

COMMERCIAL & EVENTS Director

LUKE SUTTON luke@crackmagazine.net

Head of Advertising and Partnerships

OSCAR HENSON oscar@crackmagazine.net

Advertising Manager

TOM RUTTERFORD tom.r@crackmagazine.net

Advertising Executive

CHAMA JEMMALI chama@crackmagazine.net

Product Manager

CHARLOTTE JACKSON charlotte@crackmagazine.net

Marketing Coordinator

HANNAH WHITE hannah@crackmagazine.net

CREATIVE

Design and art direction by PLINTH. Visit plinth.media for more details

Art Director

MICHELLE HELENA JANSSEN michelle@crackmagazine.net

Senior Graphic Designer

FEMKE CAMPBELL femke@crackmagazine.net

Junior Graphic Designer

LEAH FOSTER leah@crackmagazine.net

Creative Lead MANU RODRIGUEZ manu@crackmagazine.net

Head of Video Production

BENJAMIN BROOK

Senior Developer

SAUL MARTIN

CONTRIBUTORS

DAN HANCOX,

Photography

SIMON WHEATLEY, KANA MOTOJIMA, DANIIL ZOZULYA, ALEX RORISON, LAUREN DAVIS, KAB INC, SAMUEL HESS, HEAVEE

Style

ADÉMIDÉ UDOMA, BLESSING KAMBANGA, TAISHA SHERWOOD

Illustration

BOBBY REDMOND, JACK ANDERSON

Respect

NIKKI ACUTE, NOAM KLAR, NICO @ MM, TOM ADCOCK, ADAM FARRELL, MATTHEW FOGG, JAMES CUNNINGHAM, NATHAN BEAZER, HENRY BOON, HARRIET BRAMPTON, TOMMY HUDSON, MARCUS SCOTT, DANIEL ALMEIDA-LINKE, SIENNA ALMEIDA-LINKE, RACHEL J. LEÓN

London

COLLECT Lisbon

ISLINGTON MILL Manchester

PICCADILLY RECORDS

Manchester

SOUP Manchester

POPUP! Paris

There is one word that crops up often throughout this issue: resilience. The ability to withstand adversity, revealing the real fortitude of the human spirit – something that, as this challenging year continues, has been tested to its limits time and again. One thing we do know, however, is that after the storm, resilience gives back. Whether it’s material change, wisdom, or, finally, long-earned recognition.

For legendary British MC Flowdan, it was the latter. As member of east London grime collective Roll Deep, he played an essential part in spearheading the genre’s early-2000s underground boom, never compromising his dark, baritone flow to appease the genre’s subsequent pop evolution. As longtime collaborator The Bug tells Dan Hancox in the cover story, “Flowdan was very much the strong, silent core of it, really. He was solid as a rock.” This patience and unwillingness to bend led to perhaps one of the biggest music moments of 2024: Flowdan became the first ever British MC to win a Grammy for Rumble, his internet-shaking hit with some little known artists called Fred Again.. and Skrillex.

This commitment to standing firm is also shared by Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar, who, in his electrifying new album Funeral for Justice, refuses to cave in to the political forces that attempt to keep him and his people silenced and oppressed. Likewise for Lord Spikeheart, the Kampalabased metal musician that advocates for unabashed creative expression in an environment that doesn’t always understand him. For Queens R&B singer Yaya Bey, she learned the true meaning of endurance after facing immeasurable loss. And, finally, Neo Sora – the son of iconic Japanese composer and sound artist Ryuichi Sakamoto, who tells us about his father’s superhuman strength while filming his final concert, not long before he passed.

Change, change and more change. That’s all we can ever count on. But it’s in these moments where we learn the most about ourselves, others and the world around us. We have to keep going.

RECOMMENDS

POLLERWIESEN: GERD JANSON, YOUNG MARCO, MAMA

SNAKE

REVIERPARK

WISCHLINGEN,

DORTMUND

19 MAY

Edition number ten of this flagship blowout from the bleeding-edge outdoor rave specialists. A few things are guaranteed at this onedayer stretching across five stages in a stunning green haven in the heart of Dortmund: a skin-prickling sound system, eye-melting visuals and a doozy of a lineup peddling dance music’s most propulsive sounds. Creating a technoheavy disturbance this year are Denmark’s Mama Snake, Amsterdam operator KI/ KI, curveballselecting free spirit Young Marco and acid techno don Gerd Janson, who goes b2b with Narciss.

VEGYN

HERE AT OUTERNET

10 APRIL

OFFSÓNAR

POBLE ESPANYOL, BARCELONA

13-16 JUNE

Sónar’s annual spin-off series once again hands the reins over to cuttingedge club crews and dance music labels for a week of parties that reflect their guest curators’ particular USPs. Among those attempting to outdo each other in Barcelona’s open-air museum, Poble Espanyol, are Berlin’s techhouse crew Keinemusik, Zurich’s globetrotting Adriatique with their feted ‘X’ event, beloved daytime merchants Brunch! Electronik and the mighty Elrow with the dancefloor escapism of their Dance with the Serpent concept. Pick one, or collect them all.

SHYGIRL PRESENTS CLUBSHY

FABRIC

19 APRIL

TIRZAH

ROUNDHOUSE

19 APRIL

WIDE AWAKE: YOUNG FATHERS, SLOWDIVE, DRY CLEANING

BROCKWELL PARK

25 MAY

JOE ARMONJONES

ROUNDHOUSE

21 APRIL

The two biggest draws at this chocka-block all-dayer set the freewheeling tone for the rest of proceedings. Even within their distinct sound worlds, motorik-powered psych-rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Mercury Prize-winning hip-hop explorers Young Fathers regularly run amok around genres and styles – just like the rest of this wide-ranging lineup. With a bill careering from Bristolian postpunks Squid and Eartheater’s digi-pop melodrama to DJs Ben UFO, Helena Hauff and Optimo (Espacio), you’ll find no genre silos here.

DJ SPINN, BOK BOK B2B IKONIKA, SCRATCHCLART

JAZZ CAFE

26 APRIL

Tick a visit to U.K. grassroots gig institution Joiners off your bucket list as you hotfoot it around this spirited indie rock and pop crawl. Shame’s kitchen-sink punk-pop catharsis and Dream Wife’s jagged, Cure-sized riffs top things off, but there’s a whole fizzy grab-bag of emerging talent to keep you moving. Namely purveyor of lo-fi funk Willie J. Healey, indie janglersturned-disco darlings

The Orielles and sugar coated shoegazers Our Girl. Pack your comfiest kicks for this inner-city adventure.

Our guide to what’s going on in your city and beyond

GALA: DJ EZ, PALMS TRAX, SHY ONE

PECKHAM RYE PARK

24 MAY

GALA has been centring the dancefloor since 2016 with this congenial summer tear up designed to celebrate club camaraderie. The big names bringing dance music communities together this year are garage pioneer DJ EZ, trance explorer Jobs Jobse, Shy One, Palms Trax, and the inseparable K-Lone and Facta. Bringing GALA’s ethos of unity to the decks are b2bs including Sherelle and Kode9, Eris Drew with Octo Octa, DJ Paulette in the mix with Prosumer and an electric pairing of Hannah Holland and Josh Caffé. Leave your hangups at the gate.

A.G. COOK

THE UNDERWORLD

APRIL

NABIHAH IQBAL (DJ SET)

NT LOFT

20 APRIL

MYKKI BLANCO

POLIFONIC MILAN: ROI PEREZ, SHANTI CELESTE, DJ HEARTSTRING

PARCO ESPOSIZIONI NOVEGRO, MILAN

31 MAY-2 JUNE

No longer just a seaside party in the Adriatic idyll of Puglia, Italy’s Polifonic crew have also been bringing their summer festival to their home city of Milan for the past few years. They can’t replace the salty sea air, but they are making the trip to Italy’s industrial north as appealing as possible with a lineup committed to gender balance, exploration and experimentation. Which in practice means house, disco and cosmic techno spanning the time-stretching talents of Roi Perez, Live from Earth’s DJ Gigola, Shanti Celeste and Disclosure.

DOUR

FESTIVAL: EZRA COLLECTIVE, ICE SPICE, ARCA,

PLAINE DE LA

MACHINE À FEU,

DOUR 17-21 JULY

Belgium’s summer party fixture is levelling up this year with a lineup that goes harder, faster and stronger than most. There’s the usual bewildering array of electronic music’s finest, including a Bicep A/V DJ set. Away from the dance, though, we’ll be steered through an audacious live programme featuring Venezuelan avant-pop experimentalist

Arca, Taylor

Swift’s bestie

Ice Spice, cloud rapper Aminé, Turkish psych charmers Altın

Gün, and U.K. representatives

Skepta, Ezra Collective and Nia Archives.

Dour never looked so vibrant.

AÏSHA DEVI

ICA

20 APRIL

18 APRIL

ADRIANNE LENKER

BARBICAN HALL

27 APRIL

As our March cover feature put it, Adrianne Lenker has turned tenderness into an artform across several albums recorded alone and with indie-folk titans Big Thief. On her latest quietly mesmerising solo record Bright Future, Lenker’s beautiful fingerpicking and open-hearted folkrock songs land with all the emotional clarity and confidence of a songwriter who is at complete ease with her own vulnerability. Do not miss this London show if you want to hear a songwriter in the form of her life.

【Words】

Katie Hawthorne

【Photography】

Lauren Davis

RISING

SOUNDS LIKE: GUITAR MUSIC WARPED THROUGH DISTORTED ELECTRONICS

SOUNDTRACK FOR: WAITING FOR THE LAST BUS

FILE NEXT TO: ALEX G, YOUARELISTENING.TO

OUR FAVOURITE SONG: EMBARRASSED DOG

WHERE TO FIND HIM: @CHANELBEADS

“I’m not interested in reflecting the current moment,” Shane Lavers says, from under a huge black hoodie. As Chanel Beads, he creates complex, melancholic music that intentionally resists being placed in time. Recent singles like Police Scanner and Idea June sound dusty and faded, and were made from textural electronic collages which hide deceptively catchy melodies under samples of shouted speech or distorted violin. Lavers’ songs often end on the off-beat, or directly before the chorus should hit, as if your car radio abruptly lost signal. They feel ephemeral, like you’ll hum them for years but might never find them again.

Despite the title, Lavers’ forthcoming debut album Your Day Will Come wasn’t always meant to be. The New York-based musician started out by dropping pairs of songs (like 2023’s shoegazey fan favourite Ef and its looser counterpart, Shining Armor) and would tell himself the project wouldn’t grow beyond that. But as his collaborative team expanded to include his partner Maya McGrory, who plays guitar and sings feather-light vocals, and Zachary Schwartz, who uses his violin to create transcendental drone, Lavers says the “world of the sound” widened out. Suddenly an album felt within reach. Chanel Beads is still technically a solo

shows the three of them standing toe-to-toe with the crowd, veering between blissed-out ambience and raw, hardcore intensity.

With cryptic lyrics about grief, bravery and fear, as well as a neurotic focus on the passage of time (as on eerie opener Dedicated to the World : “I had that thought again/ Is memory just acting out, erasing/ What did you see? ”), Lavers is interested in extreme feeling, equally inspired by midwest emo heroes Cap’n Jazz and industrial noise music. Project highlight Embarrassed Dog wears both influences proudly; the song is split into two parts – one whispered, the other screamed. It introduces a toughened, cathartic kind of vulnerability that later peaks on Urn, with a sweetly scratchy acoustic riff building until it becomes threatening and dark, while feedback squeals like a punctured balloon.

“A lot of the inspiration for my music comes from those fleeting moments when you have a surge of confidence, a eureka moment, and you can tie your worldview into a neat little bow. Then, a second later, you’re like, ‘Oh no! That doesn’t make any sense.’ It all falls apart immediately,” he laughs, bashfully. This unpredictability threads through Lavers’ gently subversive approach to the idea that there can be

video and be like, ‘Wait, is that the right song?’ Confusion is an awesome space to work in; it’s an active way of interacting with any kind of art.”

9

9

Indeed, Your Day Will Come invites unusually close, intimate listening. Its artwork swerves the lo-fi, late-night iPhone aesthetic of Lavers’ previous releases for a cropped, greyscale edit of a 20th-century oil painting in which a crowd has gathered on a beach, engrossed by something happening just beyond the frame. The message is in the crop: Chanel Beads’ music is about life continuing, messily, in a way that you can’t ever fully capture. Rarely does a debut album feel so rich with secrets that you’ll spend an hour internet-wormholing just to find the original painting in full. But then again, as Lavers puts it, “sometimes it’s nice just to let yourself imagine the rest”.

10

【Styling】 Adémidé Udoma

【Words】 Dan Hancox

【Hair and Makeup】 Blessing Kambanga

【Photography】 Simon Wheatley

Flowdan is a giant in the U.K. underground. As part of Roll Deep, he steered the influential grime crew to murkier places. Alongside The Bug, he pushed dub and dancehall to its limits with his uncompromising flows. In February, he became the first ever British MC to win a Grammy for Rumble – the Skrillex-featuring hit that shook dancefloors as much as it did TikTok. Where does the east Londoner go from here?

Jacket: DAIWA PIER39, Trousers: ARTISANAL ONE, Sunglasses: ARTIST’S OWN, Shoes: ARTIST’S OWN

“I grew up on jungle, which had a certain feel, a grit,” says Marc Veira fondly, as he sits overlooking the stalls selling saris and fresh produce that make up Chrisp Street Market, one of the few oases of working-class life remaining in an increasingly gentrified east London. “When my friends started going to garage raves, that aesthetic and sound wasn’t me – so I checked out of socialising with the mandem. Some of us didn’t sign up for that glam part of the game.”

As Flowdan, Veira has long been an advocate for the darker, deeper corners of music. A cult favourite on the mic, the 44-year-old MC and producer is known for his gruff, rumbling vocals, which effortlessly resonate across dubstep, grime and jungle beats like a bass siren. But there have been times when this “grit” – an integral, inextricable quality of his sound – has felt out of step with the zeitgeist. In the last half of the 2000s, tensions between underground credibility and the pop mainstream once again came to a head. Grime, the genre that had burned so brightly, was rapidly fizzling out under a hail of major label fickleness, media ignorance, racist policing and unfulfilled potential.

“I was seeing my peers – the Dizzee Rascals, the Kanos – surpassing me, and doing things differently,” Veira reflects, as thoughtful and calm in person as he is fierce and glowering on the mic. “They were more radio worthy, more viable, not as dark. It had me thinking ‘OK, how can I be me in that pop realm?’ Which wasn’t the thing to be thinking, I realise now – but it’s just a natural part of wanting to be successful.”

For Veira, the road to success started with the formation of Roll Deep in 2001. Veira was not just a founding member of the storied east London grime crew – perhaps the closest thing grime has to Wu-Tang Clan – but gave them their name, and anchored their sound in grime’s Caribbean heritage, as they soared from the pirate radio stations of Bow to a memorable prime-time Top of the Pops performance in 2005.

In 2007, Veira was invited to Plastic People, London’s legendary subterranean home to grime and dubstep night FWD>>, by producer Kevin Martin (a.k.a. The Bug) who was looking for MCs with a dancehall inflection to their flow. As they began working together, they discussed the grime scene’s gravitation towards saccharine dance-pop. Veira’s Roll Deep peers Dizzee Rascal and Wiley hit No. 1 and 2 in the charts respectively in 2008 with Dance wiv Me and Wearing My Rolex ; Dizzee, Tinchy Stryder and Chipmunk went on to secure five No. 1 singles between them across 2009. The

success was gratifying, considering the prejudice and condescension with which the music industry had treated the grime scene in its prime – it’ll never sell, went the received wisdom; it’s too fast, too weird, too violent. But the Ibiza-esque pop-rap storming the charts sounded like an Auto-Tune plugin dropped into a glass of supermarket cola, and could not have been further removed from Veira’s instinctively ruffand-tough style.

Veira played Martin some of his own attempts at crossover tunes, and was met with a respectful but unequivocal takedown from the experimental producer. “I asked, ‘Don’t I need to refine myself?’ He had a whole reverse take on it,” Veira recalls. “He said, ‘It’s cool, but it’s not you. Stop being so forgiving. Don’t dilute your sound. Take the reins off, and go in harder.’” Working and touring with The Bug felt “really easy” and natural, and convinced Veira that Martin was right. “He gave me full range to be as obnoxious as possible,” he laughs. “He would say, ‘Fuck that track up, please.’ He gave me so much confidence – like, ‘I’m a weirdo and you’re a weirdo. Let’s go for it.’”

The results of their collaborations, such as seminal darkside dubs Skeng, Jah War and Pressure, have not only become underground dancefloor classics, but also affirmed for Veira that he could step away from the jungle and grime instrumentals he grew up on and “attack the beat” without ever compromising his vocal style. There is, perhaps, something karmic laced into the path he chose back then.

It was the horrorshow menace of Skeng, released 17 years ago, which led a then-little known producer called Frederick Gibson to seek Veira out for collaboration in 2018. They linked up in the studio to produce a track that would later be called Rumble. “As every MC knows, when you leave a session with a producer, all you’re thinking is, ‘Right, when are these songs coming out?’” Veira says with a rueful smile. He would text every few months to be met with polite apologies, until eventually, not wanting to be “a pest”, Veira gave up texting Gibson. Finally, he got a call back.

“He said, ‘Yo, we ain’t spoke for a while.’ I’m like, ‘I know,’” he laughs endearingly. “‘But, do you remember the song Rumble? It’s gone crazy on Boiler Room.’” Gibson’s breakout 2022 Boiler Room set as Fred Again.. peaked when Rumble – which included new production input from EDM giant Skrillex – was rewound to a raucous reception. “From then on, everything went crazy,” Veira recalls, almost in disbelief. “My manager’s phone was going mad. My bookings was going up. The feature requests was going up.” To the astonishment and glee of his many longtime admirers, that was just the beginning. Last month, Flowdan stunned the world and became the first ever U.K. MC to win a Grammy. Accepting the award for Best Dance/Electronic Recording for Rumble on behalf of the trio, Skrillex gratefully described Flowdan as “one of the biggest inspirations in underground music in my life”.

Flowdan

Jacket: MEANSWHILE Trousers: NANAMICA

Shoes:

Vindication is all the sweeter when it comes so many years down the line. Even before the Grammy recognition, 2023 was by some measure the biggest of Veira’s career. Rumble spent ten weeks in the official U.K. charts and broke the Top 20, while Baddadan, a drum’n’bass collaboration with Chase & Status, soared even higher, peaking at No. 5. His social and streaming metrics exploded as a whole new generation of fans discovered ‘the big Flowdan’. “I’m over the moon that he’s got to this position,” Martin tells me over the phone from his home in Brussels. “He genuinely hasn’t compromised – and to see him killing it now, it’s so deserved. His voice has got such an incredible tone which is instantly recognisable; he’s got the intensity of someone like Cutty Ranks. He’s an incredible lyricist, which he doesn’t get enough credit for. Marc is a genius documentarian of London noir.”

In person, Veira comes across as one of the most relaxed, affable and quick-witted of grime veterans. Less sharp elbows and war bars, he exudes the calm of someone who has learned to find contentment running his own race and pursuing his own sound. Martin recalls watching him on stage with Roll Deep: “It often felt like there were about 25 MCs on stage trying to grab the mic, and there was an excitement to that chaos – and Flowdan was very much the strong, silent core of it, really. He was solid as a rock.” Similarly, the general mood among people who knew him at the height of grime’s explosion in the 2000s is, more or less: this is an apt reward for someone who has always cared about developing his sound outside of his own ego. These days, Veira is the embodiment of patient wisdom, but is honest enough to admit that this wasn’t always the case. “Before, there was always worry if I was struggling to write, which would make me hit a brick wall. Now I don’t rush or force things because I’m sure it will happen.”

Black British music continues to be preeminent in 2024 thanks to a web of fascinating legacies and artistic endurance. Caribbean sound system culture has given Britain (and beyond) a set of practices that has defined contemporary dance music; from turntablism and microphone clashes to the all-important rewind, it can all be traced back to Jamaica. This was not only crucial to Veira’s musical education, but his personal life. Veira’s father has long performed as Gappy Crucial in Sir Coxsone Outernational, a major reggae sound system based in Brixton. As a teenager in the 90s, Veira went to see him perform at Notting Hill Carnival. “He’s a pioneer, he’s legendary. When I tuned into what he was saying,” Veira recalls,

smiling, “I began to see these massive links between what I was growing up on – jungle and drum’n’bass – and realised that this was a U.K. evolution of sound system culture. It was all about sounding better than your peers, or as good as your idols – whether in your production, mixing, live performances or engineering. There was so much competition going on.”

U.S. rap, dancehall and jungle were Veira’s first loves, and when he was ten, his mum bought him his own stereo for his birthday. As a teenager, he would tape his favourite songs, pausing, playing and rewinding over and over, painstakingly working out his favourite lyrics from MC Hammer, P.M. Dawn and Shabba Ranks. “It was a practice I got from watching my mum do it,” he says affectionately. With the lyric sheet to hand, he practised delivering them in his bedroom. “I found joy in it – it was therapeutic, and I felt like I’d accomplished something,” he remembers. A young Veira started tweaking the words slightly, “making variants”, putting his own name in place of drum’n’bass MCs like Stevie Hyper D, MC Det and Navigator, and took them into school. He would compete in lyrical

battles in the playground or the school toilets – spitting a capella, or while another kid drummed a beat by hand. “The emulation didn’t stop, even though I was evolving into my own guy. I was always listening to others and learning.”

It is this disarming humility that has made Veira so admired by people in the U.K. underground. He first got to apply some of those lessons he’d learned when MCing over jungle. “I had the confidence to try jungle because it sounded like me and the people around me. It had the feel of reggae, and it also had the vibes of the streets, with people speaking in a U.K. accent; a rude boy ting. It’s a hybrid: you’ve got that U.K. rave speed, but the voices, language and samples were straight from Jamaica,” he explains, keen to emphasise the balance. “This is what our generation learned from jungle: how to host a party, know when a drop is coming, keep the energy up and work with a DJ. [Until then], I hadn’t realised I was a raver.”

Veira grew up in the grime heartlands in east London, around Bow, Poplar and Leyton. The support of “locally famous” Wiley helped bring him into the Rinse FM crew, with the

then-pirate radio station’s founder, DJ and producer Geeneus. That too involved overcoming obstacles. “I was rejected at first. I got told by Geeneus, ‘You’re not good enough.’ Me and my friends from school in my area sent in tapes to Rinse, but got rejected. Them lot laugh when I remind them of that,” he chuckles. That didn’t stop Wiley from continuing to bring Veira along to Rinse anyway. “I was this new dark horse,” Veira recalls. As his profile continued to rise, Geeneus eventually relented and gave him his own slot with longstanding collaborator DJ Karnage, which would evolve into the infamous Roll Deep show.

With the buzz around them and the emerging grime scene growing, Roll Deep signed to Relentless Records, and in 2005, released their debut single proper, When I’m Ere – a showcase of grime’s thrilling ferocity at the height of its powers. The video, dimly lit and in constant motion, features eight different Roll Deep MCs passing the mic as they charge around the underlit pathways and stairwells of Kildare Walk, in the sprawling Lansbury Estate,

“Marc is a genius documentarian of

London noir” – The Bug

Jacket: MEANSWHILE , Trousers: NANAMICA , Shoes: ARTIST’S OWN

heading nowhere in particular – yet moving urgently forwards. Where their predecessors in U.K. gara ge outfit So Solid Crew were lucky to get 21 seconds each to flow, the Roll Deep MCs got just 14 seconds each to deliver a verse. “When I'm ‘ere, put your lights out when I'm ‘ere/ Big bag of weed, Dragon Stout when I'm ‘ere,” Veira begins, in his deep and immediately recognisable timbre. Flowdan sounded like a perfect encapsulation of the wintry, paranoid energy of London’s nascent grime scene; hoods up against the cold, skulking through the shadows of the city.

For the Crack cover shoot, Veira is being photographed against the brown brick backdrop of the same Lansbury Estate, one of the largest housing estates in London, which emerged phoenix-like from the bomb sites of World War II. Half a century later, the Lansbury Estate was part of another kind of year-zero renewal, as Poplar and Bow became the epicentre of grime. When I’m Ere, and grime at large, is now a part of British heritage, just like the estate it was built on. (In 2016,

the Lansbury Estate was celebrated by the organisation Historic England specifically because of the video for When I’m Ere.)

Despite being a representative for his ends, Flowdan is, in his own words, a character, separate from himself. “Once I realised that this is a character that Marc is in control of, it became very easy to decide when to activate that character. People really don’t know Marc; people see and hear Flowdan. I don’t always want it to be biographical, true or realistic. I just look for the fun in the attitude, the delivery. I want to entertain you.”

Veira is not only cherished but also prolific, with a host of collaborations, solo projects and even his own label, Spentshell, all under his name. A lot of his endeavours, he explains, have purely been out of artistic need or curiosity. I recall him and Wiley turning up to FWD>>, without a booking, on more than one occasion, just to check out the latest evolutions of grime and dubstep in the late 2000s, and jump on the mic impromptu.

Even now, he seems to move quietly around east London, and isn’t always recognised – not correctly, anyway; but Veira appreciates the privacy this affords him. “I love it when someone comes up to me and says, ‘Oh my god, Riko?’ [Referring to fellow Roll Deep MC, Riko Dan] I say, ‘Yep! Cool man.’ It’s an opportunity to get the fuck out,” he laughs.

Of course, this is likely about to change. On the night of the Grammys in February, Skrillex FaceTimed him from the car on his way to the ceremony in his native LA to say, “Win, lose or draw, we’ve had a great journey together –it’s love. I thought, ‘Cool’, forgot about it, and put my phone on silent. Later, I picked up my phone and it was full. I thought, ‘Shit, I’ve won a Grammy.’” Followed by showers of champagne? “Nah, but inside I was thinking, ‘Oh my god, this is everything. You don’t really play that game, but guess what you can do now?’” And what’s that? “I’m still guessing!” He throws his head back in laughter, flashing his signature grillz. Then he adjusts himself. “My day-today has changed in that I have less to do

“When

you get the OG winning a Grammy, I know that has some type of impact. If other artists followed me closely, they would know that there’s a career past their own sound. I can open their eyes to that”

– Flowdan

now, in a way. Before, my day consisted of trying to find a hit. I’ve got one now. So I feel relaxed, like the studio can wait. I’m starting to indulge and just dream.”

Unsurprisingly, Veira didn’t leave the studio waiting for too long. Two days after our meeting, I’m at Venue MOT for a night hosted by Night Slugs co-founder James Connolly, who is reviving his L-Vis 1990 moniker with a stack of bassheavy, up-front club tracks. It’s a tiny, endearingly ramshackle 150-capacity venue in an industrial estate in Bermondsey, and the U.K. funky and amapiano is going down very smoothly in the small hours of Saturday morning. All of a sudden, Flowdan and Skrillex arrive, contorting themselves into the tiny booth with Connolly. It feels almost comically out of context: I’ve barely finished talking to Veira about winning a Grammy and performing Rumble for 26,000 people (as well as a global TV audience of millions) at the Fury vs Ngannou boxing match, yet here they are, in a rough-hewn club whose toilet doors are made out of chipboard. It’s far from glamorous – exactly how Veira likes it. He and Skrillex came to debut a new three-way collab recorded that very afternoon with Connolly; a spooky, low-slung post-grime tune called Release It , which Veira rides with typical low-pitched ease. The drop comes, and Veira wheels it up with a massive grin.

Wind back two days to our interview in Poplar, and Veira is telling me about his sanguine attitude to his upcoming projects as Grammy-winning MC Flowdan. “For me, it’s on request now. If there’s work to do, I will get myself into the zone. If Skrillex phones me and says, ‘I’ve got a sick beat’, I will put as much time as I can into getting the idea started. But if that doesn’t develop instantly, I leave it and take time out.”

Veira isn’t the first underground artist I’ve encountered to be impressed, if a little surprised, by Skrillex’s sincerity and dedication to the roots of the global bass explosion of the last 15 years. “Every conversation I have with him is amazing,” Veira says. “I don’t know when he suddenly decided to champion this, but he really holds London as the hub; he’s a fanatic at all levels. I’ve seen it once or twice before in people like Geeneus: their laptop is their best friend. And that laptop is battered, because it’s been everywhere, but they live by it.”

Though Veira is perhaps too modest to say as much, it’s a level of dedication and passion that is clear from his own journey, across a full quarter of a century in music. If there’s a lesson to be learned from his

long road to fame, he says, it’s that Martin’s advice from way back when – paired with a fervent commitment to experimentation – can help U.K. MC culture keep evolving. “I think I’ve changed some people’s minds,” he says, with a knowing smirk. “Because one thing I’ve always noticed about my peers, even my grime lot, is that they often turn their noses up at a beat that’s not necessarily ‘home’.”

Veira is living proof that it is possible – perhaps even essential – for MCs to explore new sonic territories without diluting what made them great to begin with. “Unless you’re one of those special artists that can evolve, what you do gets old. When you get the OG winning a Grammy, I know that has some type of impact. And it’s not just the Grammy – I’ve been travelling the world for a long time, playing festivals and meeting producers the U.K. doesn’t even know about,” he asserts. “If other artists followed me closely, they would already know that there’s a career past their own sound. I can open their eyes to that.”

Black British music has been on a remarkable journey since Veira first started spitting on Rinse FM. It’s been a rocky road at times, with endless impediments from the very music industry that now cheerlead the same artists and genres they once dismissed. 25 years ago, it would have been hard to imagine that he’d be sitting here, holding a Grammy, in a world where Stormzy has headlined Glastonbury, Skepta has his own one-day festival, and Dave and Central Cee’s Sprinter broke streaming records last year. Has Black British music and culture’s long battle for acceptance, to succeed on its own terms, finally turned a corner?

“It’s beyond imagination,” he says, slightly dazed at it all. “I still stem it back to when Wiley said to us, ‘We can be a Dipset. We can be like those American crews, where we can branch off and do our own thing, but then come back to work as a group – we can do that.’ I just thought, ‘Shut up bro, no way.’” He pauses, taking his time to pick the right metaphor, and grins. “It’s like I won the fucking heavyweight championship.”

Tuareg trailblazer MDOU MOCTAR has built a fervent following for his blistering takedown of colonialism through stadium-sized riffs. His latest album, Funeral for Justice, makes his plight all the more urgent

Mdou Moctar isn’t one to sit still. Over the past decade, the Niger-born guitarist has been gigging almost constantly, honing his raw-edged, wailing blend of desert blues and explosive rock on stages around the world. Singing in Tamasheq and often dressed in a traditional tagelmust veil, Moctar – real name Mahamadou Souleymane – has become an axe-wielding cultural ambassador for his Tuareg people. His shows are as entrancing as they are unpredictable, as he delivers scorchingly propulsive songs that decry the lingering effects of European colonialism in Africa, backed by a tight trio of musicians he mostly met while gigging hundreds of weddings across Niger.

“I don’t just sit down in the house with my guitar,” Souleymane says during a rare moment of stasis without his instrument, contently perched on a couch in New York. “I record with the sun and nature and everything that is going on around me. I need to know what my feelings are for the world and that connection is how I get ideas to write songs.”

This urge to create amid the atmospheric sounds of his environment – wherever that may be – informed Souleymane’s last album, the 2021 breakthrough Afrique Victime. His debut for U.S. indie tastemakers Matador Records, the album’s nine tracks were written and recorded in hotel rooms, backstage and on the tour bus during a never-ending sprawl of dates across Europe and North America. With its title referencing how Souleymane sees his continent being

exploited by global powers, Afrique Victime contains whispers of birdsong and background noise interwoven with thundering guitars and longing vocals.

“I make music to make people smile,” he says. “But when I witness the struggles of my people, to get water or work or freedom, I must write about it.” The album, and its social message, earned critical acclaim and propelled Souleymane back onto the road for three months of non-stop gigging, including arena shows opening for psych-pop giants Tame Impala. “It’s important for us to tour a lot because that’s how we work things out musically with each other,” bassist and producer Mikey Coltun says from the armchair next to Souleymane. “The Afrique Victime tour really showed us how much the band has grown. We attract a very diverse, energetic crowd and the more they give to us, the more we give back.”

It was back on the road in 2022 and 2023, feeding off this intense energy, that Souleymane wrote his latest album, Funeral for Justice. Inspired not only by the onstage adrenaline of touring, Souleymane’s writing was also processing the state of the world – in particular, the increasingly troubling socio-political situation back home. Despite having gained independence from France in 1960, the European nation retained

a heavy influence in the country, expressed visibly by the unrelenting presence of the French military. AntiFrench sentiment was constant and rising, alongside fear at the increased activity from terror groups. These tensions ultimately snapped when a right-wing military coup toppled the incumbent government, ousting the French army and closing the country’s borders in July 2023.

“WE ATTRACT A VERY DIVERSE, ENERGETIC CROWD AND THE MORE THEY GIVE TO US, THE MORE WE GIVE BACK”

– MIKEY COLTUN

Crack

Artist Music

At the time, Souleymane and his band were on a U.S. headline tour and the group suddenly found themselves stranded in the country after their run of dates had concluded. “We were so afraid because we didn’t know how our families were,” Souleymane says, head in his hands. “The airports were closed and you couldn’t send any money to Niger either.” The group set up a GoFundMe to cover their costs while they were stuck in America. By the time the borders reopened two months later, they had raised over $100,000 in donations from fans including Jack White.

Once they had made it back to see their families, they felt enraged by their powerlessness and the destructive influence of political manoeuvring. Souleymane filtered this fury through into his only means of expression: the music. On the move once more, over the course of a week in a makeshift studio in upstate New York, the group sharpened their spiralling jams and sense of injustice into nine tracks that are faster, louder and more intricate than any of the previous five albums Souleymane has released. If Afrique Victime rung out like a rallying cry for Souleymane’s people, Funeral for Justice is a guttural scream from the battlefield. The frettapping distortion of Oh France laments the European country’s occupation in Niger over a frenetic percussive rhythm, while the galloping group harmonies of Sousoume Tamacheq narrate the struggles of the Tuareg people who live across Mali, Algeria and Niger. The free-flowing guitar solos of Imouhar urge for the preservation of the Tamasheq language. The title track, however, is Souleymane fully unleashed, fingerpicking his Fender Stratocaster at breakneck speed.

Souleymane may have been previously labelled as the “Jimi Hendrix of the Sahara”, thanks to his left-handed playing and affinity for distortion, but Funeral for Justice places him closer to the headbanging, finger-crunching dexterity of Eddie Van Halen, as he taps through fiendish polyrhythms to unleash his anti-colonial message. “I don’t feel like justice exists any more, and that’s why the album has its title,” Souleymane says, shifting back in his seat. “Crime is happening all over Africa. The world knows about it, yet no one does anything. I’m trying to explain what is going on around me, to show that we are still like slaves. Some countries are free on paper but not in reality. If you have African blood and African papers, you don’t feel equal.”

This discrimination has followed the band ever since they began touring. Prejudiced Home Office decisionmaking even caused them to cancel

shows in the U.K. in 2017 and 2018 after they were rejected entry. “It’s never easy for these guys to get anywhere. They need visas for every place and it’s never-ending,” Coltun, who is originally from Washington D.C., sighs. “Going to the airport to pick them up, there’s always fear that they won’t come out. It feels like a big ‘fuck you’ to the system that tries to keep them away when they do make it through. It’s a really profound and beautiful thing for us to hug each other at those arrivals.”

In defiance of these border restrictions, Souleymane has made it a long way from humble beginnings. Growing up in the mining town of Arlit, north of Niger’s fifth-largest city Agadez, he was first introduced to the guitar after witnessing a local concert by Tuareg musician Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou. Completely taken by his searing style of playing, Souleymane set his heart on learning Oumbadougou’s instrument. However, his parents didn’t approve of this non-acoustic music, so he had to build his own rudimentary guitar from bicycle strings. Despite these obstacles, Souleymane soon discovered he had a knack for songwriting and, after upgrading to a proper guitar, began mastering his instrument by playing Tuareg assouf rock music at weddings and local celebrations.

By 2008, Souleymane had self-released his debut album, Anar, which gained a grassroots following throughout the Sahel region thanks to its infectious blend of undulating assouf, 80s-indebted electronic drum pads and AutoTuned vocals. Primarily shared from listener to listener through bootleg mp3s on mobile phones, the tracks eventually caught the attention of Christopher Kirkley, an amateur American ethnomusicologist and founder of the Sahel Sounds label, who tracked down Souleymane and released his song Tahoultine on the 2011 compilation, Music from Saharan Cellphones . It was through these recordings that Coltun first heard Souleymane’s music, and he was taken by its ingenuity. Kirkley eventually brought Souleymane over to the U.S. to play some shows in 2017, which Coltun ended up tour managing.

“When Mdou arrived, I ended up driving him on some dates and once he found out I played bass, he said I had to play with them that night,” Coltun says with a laugh. “It went from that one night, to joining the rest of the tour, to then joining the group. It happened super fast.” Since then, Coltun has produced Souleymane’s first full band

record, 2019’s Ilana: the Creator, as well as Afrique Victime and now Funeral for Justice. “It’s special being in this band. Mdou Moctar shows are all different, since we don’t ever talk about a set – it’s whatever we feel in that moment,” Coltun gleefully says. “You never know what you’re gonna get.”

The group are currently preparing for their biggest show to date at Coachella, hoping to blast this unpredictable energy through the crowd of thousands. Yet, as they attract larger audiences, there is also increased risk for Souleymane in being so outspoken. “It’s not safe for me to play in some villages back home

material change to his compatriots. For each album released, he has a goal of building two wells for villages in Niger, while some proceeds from Afrique Victime have already gone towards a local orphanage. Whenever he returns home from touring, Souleymane spends his time travelling to local villages to find out how he can make a tangible difference, all while reconnecting with his family and sketching out new ideas for his musical projects. It’s this restlessness and empathy that fuels Souleymane’s vital, blistering odysseys about inequality and liberation;

because a lot of people would come, and I’m scared that something might happen,” he says, visibly affected. “I just want to make people happy, so I have to do it in another way.”

Always searching for new ways to spread joy to his community, Souleymane is increasingly searching for ways in which his music can bring

a driving, powerful self-expression that not only raises urgent awareness, but also presents solutions in precarity. The only certainty, however, is that Souleymane will always remain in motion, in his musical experimentation and advocacy, whatever direction he takes next. “For the rest of my life, I will be helping my people,” he says, smiling wide now. “Whatever way that means.”

Artist Music

“I MAKE MUSIC TO MAKE PEOPLE SMILE. BUT WHEN I WITNESS THE STRUGGLES OF MY PEOPLE, I MUST WRITE ABOUT IT” – MAHAMADOU SOULEYMANE

Produced exclusively for Crack Magazine by Jack Anderson@jek.media

Lord Spikeheart brought the world’s attention to the African metal underground as one half of DUMA. Now solo, the Nairobi-born provocateur is wielding the power of extreme music for positive ends

Cameron Cook

【Photography】

Daniil Zozulya

If you know anything about African metal in 2024, it’s likely that Lord Spikeheart has something to do with it. One half of the industrial grindcore act Duma, who rocketed out of Uganda in 2020 with a seismic debut album powered by Richter-qualifying riffs, Spikeheart (a.k.a. vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Martin Kanja) is a core member of a network of underground metalheads in the continent finally getting international recognition.

“These bands have existed for many years, but they never really had a platform, or a way for the outside world to know about them,” says Kanja from his current base of Kampala. “It’s been a great inspiration to see people doing this music in an environment where it’s not really supported. Now there are U.S. labels releasing African bands like Arka’n Asrafokor from Togo, and writers covering the scene. I’d say Duma inspired a lot of the bands that already existed here, and showed that there is actually an international demand for this kind of music. It’s been a long time coming.”

When Kanja dials in, he asks if we can turn our cameras off due to connection issues. Given the soul-rending brutality of his debut solo record as Lord Spikeheart, The Adept , it’s hard not to imagine an occult warrior, surrounded by obsidian-plated guitars and decrepit synths, alchemising doom metal in a dank basement. Surprisingly – and delightfully – the man that comes across during our conversation is the exact opposite: Kanja is disarmingly affable, laughs at almost everything and speaks about the genre with the wonder of a newly minted teenage fan. He chats

at breakneck speed about everything from classic Norwegian death metal to literary romanticism, passionately recounting all his influences. It’s clear that Khandja lives and breathes heavy music.

Kanja’s journey into the black night of metal began like any other metal fan’s: as a kid at school, in his hometown of Nakaru, Kenya, looking for ways to pass the time. “When I graduated high school, I moved into the city [of Nairobi]. Soon I discovered a show on XFM radio called Metal to Midnight,” he remembers. “There were already bands in Kenya that had been playing for a couple of years, and it really captivated me that they even existed. I always knew I wanted to do music, but I wasn’t really sure what genre. When I found metal, it was so natural; it was how I felt on the inside. So I started a band.”

That band was Lust of a Dying Breed – Kanja’s first real shot at professional music-making. Inspired in part by Opeth and Bloodbath’s Mikael Åkerfeldt, he began to focus on his vocals, practising screaming and growling every day. “I was so broke, I couldn’t afford instruments,” he admits.

“Becoming a vocalist was just the easiest way of getting started. I used to really mess up my vocals because I wasn’t doing it properly. I was really pushing it, in the wrong way. At the first few Lust of a Dying Breed shows, I’d lose my voice for the next two days. At some point, I realised that it was just like normal singing, with an extreme falsetto.” Kanja developed the ability to stretch his voice to an impressive range, oscillating effortlessly from high-pitched screeching to deafening, cavernous bass notes. This dramatic vocal gear-shifting remains his calling card, setting him apart from other metal musicians of his generation.

In the midst of all his bellowing, Lust of a Dying Breed began to gain a foothold in Nairobi’s burgeoning metal scene; one in which Kanja had begun to pour his blood, sweat and tears. “Back in the day, everything was very DIY,” he says, with a wistful chuckle. “We were recording in our friends’ studios or in our bedrooms. We’d put on gigs that were mostly other metal kids, and then corporate people – guys who wanted to chill in a different setting because they had been working all week. It was a very tight community because it was rare to find somebody who actually liked the

kind of music you listened to. When you met someone like that, you became best friends immediately.”

Kanja and his community would request burned CDs from pirate Facebook groups so they could get their fix and expand their knowledge. The list of influences is seemingly bottomless, but ten years on, some of those early obsessions are still front and centre in Kanja’s music (“we really loved Slipknot, Bullet for My Valentine, Sepultura and Black Sabbath, of course”). Eventually, the Kenyan scene began to connect with other bustling metal communities across Africa, from Botswana to South Africa and Egypt. With the help of an organisation called Hardcore Help Foundation, international bands like All for Nothing and Stick to Your Guns were able to play shows in east Africa for the first time ever. Local festivals like This Is Africa started attracting western acts and, suddenly, Kanja’s opportunities began to expand beyond the scene he helped grow. “The energy was insane, people moshed like crazy,” he says of those concerts. “Things started to change: bands became more serious, regularly organising shows and also recording a lot. There were a couple of studios that actually recorded this kind of music and released compilations, like Andromeda Studios in Kenya. But there was a need for infrastructure and a proper way to get the music out from band practice rooms and into quality recording studios, and then to consumers. It became much more professional.”

Kanja relocated to the Ugandan capital of Kampala in 2019 and founded Duma with guitarist and producer Sam Karugu. They soon became the east African musical export on everyone’s lips. Although he had been quietly releasing music under the Lord Spikeheart moniker on SoundCloud since 2017, it was Duma’s unholy marriage of death metal and driving, experimental electronic sounds that pulled the global metal community into

Kanja’s orbit. This huge international success undoubtedly changed the course of African metal forever, but Spikeheart found himself pining for the creative freedom of being solo. So last year, after one final show, Duma split up and Kanja jumped headfirst into making The Adept .

“With Duma, we expressed what we had to express,” he explains. “I have a clear vision of what I want to achieve with Lord Spikeheart. Making this record, I felt completely unbound. I like what I like, and I’m not afraid of exploring different genres. As a solo act, you build a system around yourself to push your own art.”

Kanja’s relationship to the genre is something he brings up a lot in conversation. One of the things that makes metal, as a subculture, so prone to fanaticism is that true appreciators are able to excavate layers of meaning through what, to the untrained ear, sounds like an onslaught of noise. The Adept takes this skill to extremes, using metal as a base to slather on shades of techno, trap, hip-hop, even trance. There is a grimly foreboding mountain’s worth of ideas compressed into the album’s 13 tracks, yet it never feels overstuffed. Rather, each listen unveils something new; a fresh hybrid or experiment that pushes the limits of song structure. One such track is Nobody, a collaboration with DJ Scotch Rolex, which begins with a bone-chilling downward spiral of a synth line before a syncopated metal riff and trap beat explodes like a rifle shot.

“It can be metal, it can be electronic, it can be ambient, it can be dark, it can be happy, it can be nostalgic,” Kanja says of his sonic approach. “It can be all these energies together. It’s a journey, it’s an experience. I want to merge with the consciousness of people watching my show, like when you’re in nature and you’re looking at the waves in the ocean – it’s something happening right now, in the present.”

The Adept is dedicated to Kanja’s great grandmother, who was the only woman to attain the rank of field marshal in the Kenyan Mau Mau rebellion of the 50s and 60s, which started the fight for independence from British colonial rule. “I love heavy music because it’s my response to this resistance, to this trauma and pain.

I feel like it’s a good outlet for that,” Kanja says, highlighting the urgency of his artistic practice. “Today, I see a lot of cultural colonialism in Africa. Africa has so many talented artists who are exploited every day because most of

them live in very poor conditions. They are scared to speak up because they think that what they have will be taken away, which is already very little. It creates this roundabout; a symbiotic system where the victim is keeping quiet and supporting the oppressor, an accomplice to the system.”

Part anti-colonialist manifesto, part spiritual homecoming, part metalhead’s encyclopaedia, The Adept is a resolute artistic statement. Heavy music may be rife with aestheticism that evokes death and darkness, but at its core, Kanja’s message is one of love, hope and, most importantly, defiance. And what could be more metal than that? “My music is a reaction. It’s a hard reaction, but a positive one,” he says as our conversation draws to a close. “With all the rage and bloodshed of the past, we can’t continue with hate. Maybe we didn’t have the chance to speak about it back in the day, when these things were happening. But now we can – and we can move on, and heal.”

Lord Spikeheart

“WHEN I FOUND METAL, IT WAS SO NATURAL; IT WAS HOW I FELT ON THE INSIDE”

YAYA BEY’S soulful, jazzinflected ruminations on the complexities of Black womanhood have been a vehicle for healing and understanding her past. But in the face of a recent lifealtering loss, she is choosing to surrender to the present

【Words】 Jasmine Kent-Smith

【Photography】 Alex Rorison

【Makeup】 Taisha Sherwood

Hadaiyah Bey is in a west London hotel room contemplating what it means to be present. It’s a profound topic for an early winter morning, but the New York native more commonly known as Yaya Bey seemingly relishes this kind of philosophical musing. “To exist without resistance,” Bey offers wistfully, “to just be with what is in the most immediate moment without trying to change it.”

Bey’s new album, Ten Fold, is an extension of this commitment to relinquish control. A surrendering to the universe in the face of life-altering loss, the record was created in the wake of the death of her father Ayub – the rapper and hip-hop producer Grand Daddy I.U. – in December 2022. In a post announcing the project, Bey describes the work as “a recording of the year I lost the things I thought I could not live without and the proof that I did indeed survive”, acknowledging the sense of reflection and fluctuating emotions that flow through its 16 tracks.

Ten Fold isn’t her first foray into vulnerable, diaristic songwriting. In fact, it’s an artistic quality that’s become something of a signature for the 34-year-old. On critical faves like 2020 breakout Madison Tapes and 2022’s genre-spanning Remember Your

North Star, Bey gracefully offloaded and unpacked the complexities of her life, recounting stories of sex, healing, family dynamics, Black womanhood and misogyny, all set to the luscious sounds of Black musical traditions like R&B, hip-hop, reggae and jazz.

Ten Fold flits between ruminative and freewheeling, untethered to any specific structure or mood. This speaks to its creation, too. Bey didn’t start working on the album with a particular theme in mind. Instead, she listened to the breezy instrumentals supplied by the likes of Exaktly, Boston Cherry, Jay Daniel, Karriem Riggins and Butcher Brown’s Corey Fonville, and expelled what needed to come out. “Because of that,” she carefully explains, “it’s the first album that I’m not so removed from now that it’s done – because it’s just an album about the flow of life.”

Bey was born and raised in Queens, New York. As a child, she struggled with school and its strict structures (“I was a horrible student!” she laughs). She much preferred being at home in her room, which became a hub for creative freedom. Here, she hunkered down and listened to artists like Donny Hathaway, Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z and State Property. “I had a Prince and Aretha Franklin phase. I also had an Amy Winehouse era. Man, all kinds of stuff…” she drifts, smiling. Around the age of nine, Bey took an interest in writing songs and poems. Her father, who was her primary parent, nurtured this artistic curiosity and encouraged her to pen hooks for his own tracks. “We had a very deep bond that formed over – and through – music,” she says, her voice full of emotion. “It moulded me in a way that nothing else ever has.”

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Evocative turns of phrase like over and through come naturally to Bey, who, during our call, chooses her words carefully and delivers them with intention – much like her artistic output. This considered approach makes sense: Bey’s practice as a poet taught her she doesn’t “want to be stuck in a box”. While poetry was something she first embraced as a way to satisfy her writing itch, it was also a medium she leaned on at a time when pursuing a singing career was discouraged by those around her. “[My dad] always wanted me to write songs, but for other people; he didn’t want me to sing. Later in his life, it was always the elephant in the room,” Bey admits, speaking about her father’s own career misgivings. “I know he had a lot of regrets about that.”

Bey grew up Muslim, and the title Ten Fold is inspired by the story of Ayub (like her dad) in the Quran, or the story of Job in the Bible. As the tale goes, Ayub was considered a faithful servant. He was made to endure loss, grief and pain by the devil as a test of his devotion to god. This resilience, however, eventually leads to reward, as god returns Job’s fortunes tenfold. “My dad lost a lot of things in his time being a musician. I always felt like, when it was my time, I’d be the tenfold. I’d get it all back,” Bey asserts. “Not just in success or money or accolades – but in how I will take heed of the lessons. Because there’s a lot of life lessons in choosing to do this.”

to share this. So I’ve been trying to make him present. Just trying to have him here in whatever way that I can.”

On the track East Coast Mami, Bey included a sample of her father’s wisdom via a voice note, in which he encourages his child to “present yourself to the world like you’ve been somewhere”. Elsewhere, Bey sings about spending money on taxes and putting “her daddy on a boat ” on the jazzy Crying Through My Teeth (previewed last summer in a blue-hued Colors session) while swaggering dancehall cut So Fantastic fuses Bey’s lower, icier register with her father’s commanding vocals.

shows and they get upset because I’m not shy about my political views. I speak up at every show. Then after, someone will be on YouTube, Twitter or TikTok really offended by something I said.”

It’s not everyone, she’s quick to add, and she’s appreciative of those who do get it. But for Bey, performance isn’t just about showing up for a crowd – it’s about showing up for herself and her community. “People have a hard time digesting a Black person – especially a Black person who is perceived as female – up there, saying what they will and will

reasserts the purpose of her art and live performances, and discusses the tokenization of Black artists in predominantly white independent music spaces. Judging by the supportive comments from followers, her words seem to have struck a chord.

This isn’t a surprise. Bey is an expert communicator; and it’s always on her own terms, even when the topics are tough or muddy. Her priority is simply to stay true to herself; to remain

Stories of her father permeate our entire conversation. He was Bey’s biggest inspiration and remains a constant grounding force in every aspect of her life. As a child, right through until early adulthood, Bey viewed the world through his eyes. “Whatever my dad said was cool, was cool. Whatever my dad said was true, was true,” Bey says, softly. She is not afraid to admit that he was her ultimate coach in life and art. “If this was a sport, he’s the one that trained me, and he’s the one that made me love the game. Now I’m having my first big games and he’s not here,” she sighs. “I think that is the hardest part of it all: not being able

In pursuit of emotional honesty, Bey often reveals intimate details of her family life, genderqueer identity and interior world. Does she ever feel too exposed? She brushes this off. “The music is the only place that’s mine. I need to be vulnerable in that space because I can’t control anything else; none of us really can,” she asserts. “We have to work jobs we don’t want to work. Do things we don’t want to do. Witness atrocities we can’t stop. There’s so much that happens outside of our control and so many things we have to try to fit ourselves into to survive. But in my music, I don’t have to have any restrictions. And I need it that way.”

This freedom of expression translates to her live shows, too; another space in which Bey’s innermost thoughts are left to roam. However, she’s learned the hard way that sharing her views before an audience can invite torment, mainly because “not all of your fans are like you”. She takes a beat, then expands. “I’m learning that a lot of white men listen to me. But then they come to my

not do, what they don’t feel up to doing. [They’re] witnessing me in protest,” she says, pausing. “But you’re here to see my art and it’s not up to you to dictate what that is. I’m not here to shuck and jive for you. This is a conversation, and I’m initiating this conversation because I’m making the art, so you can’t tell me what the end of the conversation needs to look like.”

Days after our call, the topic is still on her mind. In a lengthy caption accompanying an Instagram photo dump from a recent promo trip in Europe, she

authentic and present, and keep feeding the fighting spirit that her father instilled in her. Going forward, a renewed sense of openness will also sit among these priorities. “There’s so much that I thought I knew that I don’t,” she ponders, as our exchange comes to a natural end. “If I can stay open to what is meant for me this year, I think I will have done alright.”

Artist Music

“WE HAVE TO WORK JOBS WE DON’T WANT TO WORK. WITNESS ATROCITIES WE CAN’T STOP. THERE’S SO MUCH THAT HAPPENS OUTSIDE OF OUR CONTROL AND SO MANY THINGS WE HAVE TO TRY TO FIT OURSELVES INTO TO SURVIVE.

IN MY MUSIC, I DON’T HAVE TO HAVE ANY RESTRICTIONS. AND I NEED IT THAT

WAY”

Japanese director Neo Sora’s film of his father’s final concert is a profound examination of artistic curiosity and human resilience

“When I was two or three years old, my father sat me down in front of the TV at home and forced me to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey,” Neo Sora animatedly explains, recalling the family anecdote that has proved pivotal to his creative journey. “I yelled and screamed because I clearly didn’t want to. I’m sure that traumatised me to some degree because I make films now.”

The artist, filmmaker and translator is recalling his colourful childhood immersed in cinema. Speaking from New York, he bursts out laughing as he tells the story – a shift in his otherwise thoughtful, but slightly reserved, demeanour. Wearing a sharply tailored black shirt, wirerimmed glasses and his hair cropped short, Sora has been busy of late. He’s currently in the U.S. for three weeks (away from his main base of Tokyo) working on the post-production of his as-yet-untitled feature film, a comingof-age story set in a futuristic Japan. In the past few years, he’s also released the short film The Chicken, was a fellow at the 2022 Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Labs, and currently sits as part of the team behind Zakkubalan, an independent film collective spread between Tokyo and New York.

But it’s his forthcoming documentary, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus , which showcases Sora’s talents most vividly. A deeply intimate, minimalistic and moving piece of filmmaking, Opus depicts the final piano concert by Ryuichi Sakamoto, one of Japan’s most famous and celebrated composers, who passed away in March 2023. Sakamoto made indelible contributions to cinema through his film score work on movies such as The Revenant , The Last Emperor and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, and was also an electronic music pioneer as part of Yellow Magic Orchestra, which he co-founded in 1978. But Sora’s connection to Opus is more than just professional: Sakamoto was his father.

Tender, delicate and exquisitely shot, Opus was one of Sora’s most complex visual projects and is, at times, difficult to watch. Its opening 20 minutes, featuring some of Sakamoto’s most melancholy compositions, feel shaped by an awareness of mortality, given that Sakamoto passed away not long after filming. Shot in stark black and white – perfectly capturing the contrast of the piano’s keys, as well as Sakamoto’s choice of black attire against his trademark silver hair – the film maintains a constant proximity to

the piano and highlights both the labour required to play it for a man in ailing health, as well as the joy it clearly brings him.

Despite Sora’s critical role in the making of the film, he’s reluctant to claim it as his own. “Obviously, I took the helm of the project as the director. But to be honest, I don’t see myself as the auteur or the artistic voice behind the project, because I think the main artistic voice is Sakamoto himself.” He describes his involvement as that of a creative conduit for his parents, both of whom were conscious of the project’s urgency as Sakamoto’s health diminished. “I owe my whole life to my parents, and both of them asked me to do it. And I have a very good relationship with them.”

This was not the first time Sora had been involved in filming his father (who he mostly refers to as “Sakamoto” throughout our conversation). He also contributed some of the cinematography on Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda , Stephen Nomura Schible’s flawless 2017 documentary, which focused on Sakamoto’s return to composition, and showcased his infinitely curious, generous and gentle spirit in the wake of the cancer diagnosis which ultimately proved fatal. If Opus serves as a companion piece to Coda , it’s one exhibiting a much tighter and simpler focus: the movement of hands over piano keys, the meticulous placement of objects in a room, and the emotional resonance of all these choices in transmitting Sakamoto’s life’s work.

When asked what it was like working on the film, particularly at such a critical juncture in his father’s life, Sora is hesitant to engage. “I understand the impetus behind people asking those questions because I do think it is a fairly dramatic setup for the film, right? A son films his father’s final performance before he died, and now he’s dead,” he says. “I get it – it’s very melodramatic in a way.” He politely makes it clear that he prefers to talk about the more practical aspects of the project, but is also aware of the contradictions of having to promote a film he doesn’t see as his. “I ended up having to take this role of representative to some degree, and that’s actually something that I prefer not to do if possible. But I also want people to see the film, so I do feel a responsibility towards the film as the director.”

Sora was primarily focused on the compositional aspects of production, something he puts down to a quirk of his personality: always thinking about how something will look through a camera lens. “I think a lot of filmmakers end up having this third-person perspective inside of their minds,” he says with another laugh. “I’m having these experiences, but then there’s always a kind of eagle’s eye – it’s like watching myself having those experiences.” Shooting took place over nine days, a schedule that was partly designed to be as manageable as possible for Sakamoto. “The crew and I would come in for the first half of the day, set up, and then Sakamoto would come in and practise a couple of songs. Then we’d start shooting. We would shoot between two to five songs per day.”

From the outset, the aim of Opus was to create a real concert-like experience. Filmed in the cavernous interior of Tokyo’s NHK 509 studio –chosen specifically by Sakamoto for its superb acoustics – the focus was on how to maximise the minimal setup the team created. “We could really be creative with the three cameras that we had, and move in cinematic ways. All the movement was intended to express what it could be like to have a subjective experience at a concert.”

At times, this entailed close proximity to Sakamoto, with the camera hovering over his shoulder or close to his face or hands, zooming in on the contours of his knuckles or the creases around his mouth as he concentrated. “I was very aware of the fact that I have intimacy with my own father. It’s a privilege that I thought could be very useful for the film,” expresses Sora, warmly. In one scene, Sakamoto is heard saying, “I need a break. This is tough. I’m pushing myself,” which is practically the only dialogue in the 100-minute film. In this instance, part of Sora’s role as not only a director but as a son was to ensure Sakamoto’s wellbeing. “Because of his health, I was very careful about how much effort he was putting in. There were definitely moments where I thought that perhaps we could have done the camera work a little bit better,” he admits, pondering whether at times the process was too intrusive and intense for Sakamoto.

Sora also had to consider how to shoot the piano itself. In the opening scene of Coda , Sakamoto is seen looking at a piano that survived the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which subsequently caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. He tends to it almost as though it is a wounded animal, revealing his deep love and appreciation for the instrument. In Opus , on the other hand, more attention is given to the physical effort required to play it.

“Inevitably, the piano ends up being a character of sorts,” explains Sora. “One

This concern with the impermanence of the human body is mirrored in the film’s direct acknowledgement of the passage of time. In keeping with the minimalist aesthetic, this is primarily communicated through a masterful use of lighting, shadow and tone, which captures the changing light cycle of a day, and explores how we are physically affected by the natural world. “I also really wanted to express the idea that the concert spanned one single day,” says Sora of the subtle shifts in the

of the reasons we wanted to shoot in black and white is because I was really focused on capturing the physicality of the performance, because the film is about his ailing body as well.”

colour palette. “When you watch the film, you’ll see that the lighting starts really dark and then, at a certain point, gradually starts to brighten up. Suddenly, it’s morning.”

Opus isn’t only a document of Sakamoto’s last concert but also a showcase of his enduring commitment to composition, so I ask Sora how he thinks Sakamoto might have wanted to be remembered. “I don’t know if he’d be

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus Film

too interested in legacy.” He then takes a short pause, considering the weight of his words. “For him, music was just something he did.” Sora explains that his father, instead, was truly just dedicated to the immersive process of creativity, always in the pursuit of fulfilling his endless curiosities and lust for life. “Even if you left him on a desert island without an audience or instruments,” he smiles, “I’m sure he would have still been thinking about exploring sounds.”

“I WAS VERY AWARE OF THE FACT THAT I HAVE INTIMACY WITH MY OWN FATHER. IT’S A PRIVILEGE THAT I THOUGHT COULD BE VERY USEFUL FOR THE FILM” – NEO SORA

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus

THE CLICK

【Photography】

Samuel Hess

I moved into my first house with friends as a teenager, still living in my hometown of Redding, California. It was a “house show” house with shag carpet, wood panelling and a swamp cooler. Sweltering in the summer, frigid in the winter. My roommates were two members of the same band. We lived next door to a couple of our friends. We all hung out constantly. Music was life.

Not long before I moved in, I’d started secretly writing and recording songs of my own, with a crude setup in my bedroom. I had a vintage Fender amp with built-in reverb I’d borrowed from my mother, a microphone I’d just rest on various objects, and a Sony CassetteCorder portable tape recorder. I sheepishly started showing tunes to my friend. He was impressed and the encouragement fuelled my sense of purpose.

Sometime after I’d moved in, I was at our neighbour’s house and learned that he had a small Tascam four-track cassette recorder. He often took a paternal tone with me, or brotherly at least, and suggested I borrow it for a couple days. I jumped at the chance. Once secluded, I wrote and recorded something swiftly. The ability to record a harmony over an existing vocal part was a complete revelation and I felt mad with power.

A year later I made a scrappy landing in San Francisco, arriving by Greyhound bus. In the subsequent years, my living and work situations were unstable. But one Christmas, when things had settled down, I received a Tascam Portastudio four-track as a present. I felt the familiar rush of power and spent more time writing and recording. I recorded my first single, Night Faces , and my entire second album, On Your Own Love Again, on this same four-track.

I never acquired the gear myself. It took friends seeing something I couldn’t. I still write my songs on a primitive setup before bringing them to more traditional studio contexts. The studio – plate reverbs, tape machines, highceiling live rooms – bring back the same emancipatory feeling of sitting in a closetsized bedroom furtively recording songs onto an old Tascam.

JESSICA PRATT

41

In her own words, folk singersongwriter Jessica Pratt recalls the humble, generous gift that opened her eyes to her own talent

THE Your favourite artists’ favourite new music

FILTER

THE UGANDAN PRODUCER EXPERIMENTING WITH SKEWED R&B, AMBIENT JAZZ AND LOW-END ELECTRONICS.

CHRISTIAN LOVE FORUM X-NIHILO HEAT CRIMES

MASAKA MASAKA

Mysterious Thessaloniki outfit Christian Love Forum’s syncretic blends of Greek and Eastern European modes stand far out from everything else right now. Made up of a brotherly trio with Greek and Ukrainian heritage, their latest release sounds at times like a cross between Muslimgauze, Belgian new beat and giallo horror soundtracks, and at others, descends into new-age melodrama while always staying rooted in its folk underpinnings. The brothers also run Live Adult Entertainment, a cult label putting out obscure releases – a few of which have been reissued by Death of Rave, including their excellent Naked Light , featuring music from a lost tape of keyboard jams, field recordings, meditative noise and EBM.

CERGIO PRUDENCIO

ANTOLOGÍA 1: OBRAS PARA LA ORQUESTA EXPERIMENTAL DE INSTRUMENTOS NATIVOS BUH RECORDS

Bolivian composer Cergio Prudencio’s work is connected to the project, Orquesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos (OEIN), which he cofounded in 1980 and which he is still the director of. The OEIN initiative is a result of the intentional inclusion of Aymara musical traditions into the world of contemporary music. In Prudencio’s words, it is an artistic platform for “finding in the Indigenous conception of music, elements of change and transformation, to establish a historical continuity”. This compilation not only features native instruments, but also narrates the complex socio-historical context and practices of the Andean Indigenous community. It’s one of the most incredible musical experiments that has emerged from Bolivia and Latin America.

NORMAL NADA THE KRAKMAXTER TUBO DE ENSAIO NYEGE NYEGE TAPES

Normal Nada the Krakmaxter’s masterpiece Tribal Progressive Heavy Metal was one of my favourite releases from 2023. Less than a year later, he is back with an even madder outing, Tubo de Ensaio. It mashes everything from house, krautrock, soca, funaná, ragga, tarraxinha, hip-hop and trance into his metakuduro fold. It’s about as unpredictable as a dance album can be without going for shock value. Born and raised in the Republic of Guinea-Bissau in west Africa, Normal Nada migrated to Portugal at 13 and was based for many years in Lisbon’s Santo António Dos Cavaleiros housing projects, after previously having lived in the Algarve. Normal Nada’s compositions are a spiked expression of Lisbon’s patchwork of batida styles, and a direct link to west Africa’s vibrant musical legacy.

LONDON-BASED SELECTOR EXTRAORDINAIRE OF ONLY THE FINEST CLUB RIDDIMS.

DJ PLENTYSONGZ

STREET ON FIRE 5 (MIXED)

PLENTYVIBE MEDIA ENT

PlentySongz calls himself the “Chief of DJs”, and who are we to disagree! The cruise beat movement has been popping in Nigeria over the past few years and is one of those sounds I was instantly hooked on. On Street on Fire 5, there’s a distinctive no-fucks-given energy that could only come from marginalisation or being on the outskirts of the commercial music industry. I proper screw up my face when I hear these tunes. They can often be hard to mix because there’s so much happening, and so many layers existing all at once, but I love it. These tracks are wicked because they’re actually mini-mixes which switch up many times, from hard to melodic to frantic, and back again. Pure fiyah.

NEGDEDUNN

CARIBBEAN STUDIES, VOL. 1 MATRACA

This is one of those releases that makes me go: yes, this is exactly what I wanna hear in club music. This EP is a fusion of loads of influences like hard drum, gqom and dembow, all driven by Negdedunn’s Haitian roots. He injects his heritage into all of these tracks, drawing on traditional rabòday, voodoo and kompa. I’m a huge fan of Haitian music and drums, and I love how Negdedunn ties all of these influences together while never losing the Haitian identity throughout. Each track feels like a totally different experience and they all tell their own story; a proper melting pot of sounds that Negdedunn loves. The name of the EP and cover art are also really cool, and contextualise the meaning and emotional depth behind the project. I’m super excited to hear Vol. 2!

DJ RAMON SUCESSO

SEXTA DOS CRIAS

LUGAR ALTO

Where do I even begin with this one? Baile funk is a genre that low-key intimidates me because of the rate at which it evolves. It’s so hard to keep up with, but in the best way possible. This release is a mixtape of two mixes from the Rio nutter/legend Ramon Sucesso – an artist that has taken the art of DJing funk to whole new levels. When I first saw a video of him playing, I was like, ‘What is this? ’ It’s so great and fun and extra that it makes me want to cry with joy. I also love when music like this is pressed to vinyl because it becomes immortalised in the way it deserves, existing alongside jazz, reggae, soul and other timeless genres with Black roots.

PISSED JEANS

PHILLY HARDCORE PUNK CREW WHOSE VISCERAL SONGS TAKE IT ALL THE WAY. CHOSEN BY MATT KORVETTE.

ANTENNA ANTENNA

URGE RECORDS

Hot damn, a new Shogun band! You may recognise that mononym as the alias of the Royal Headache vocalist, and if so, you’ll certainly recognise his classy, soulful vocals. I say soulful but not at the expense of remaining punk as hell, in that sort of doomed, self-destructive sort of way. One of those “should’ve been huge” cases, though what is the point of being huge anyway, and why should anyone try to be huge on purpose? Anyway, these songs pick up right where Royal Headache left off: more melodic, upbeat powerpop punk with Shogun belting it out like crazy, like Billy Joel if he actually started the fire. Lost is probably my favourite cut, but Antenna State, where he howls about no longer smoking weed, hits a beautiful level of uncomfortable sincerity.

BRUNO PRONSATO

THIS MORNING TALKS HAZE

Probably my favourite fake-Italian-named minimal tech-house producer, Texas-bred Bruno Pronsato keeps the dancefloor crackling in the same pleasantly disjointed manner that Ricardo Villalobos continues to favour. This Morning Talks has its own identity, though. Sure, the sparse and elastic minimal rhythms are present, but Pronsato decorates them with all sorts of quizzical and cheeky accoutrements. There’s the voice of a pesky pick-up artist on Street Preachers , a different inebriated guy on This Freak Out , some strangely layered claps, whistling in the style of Juelz Santana, and all sorts of appealing quirks and blissedout blips. This form of techno seems particularly untrendy these days, which of course makes it that much cooler.

TRYSTERO

SFUMARE E VEDERE KNEKELHUIS

I always turn to the Knekelhuis label when I want a distinctly non-American point of view on avant-garde electronics, post-punk and dance music. I hadn’t heard of the duo Trystero before, but seeing as they share an accumulated nationality breakdown of Scotland, Luxembourg and France (with an active German speaker in the mix) and ping-pong between loose and taut synthwave styles, it’s the perfect fix. Most of Sfumare e Vedere is laid-back and cool, only deploying Duran Duran-style guitars when absolutely necessary, on Rock dei Pelicani (con Alexia) . This record is constantly intriguing and weird in a way that reminds me of Illitch and Carlos Perón. You can probably resist dancing for the first few tracks, but when that Suburra groove hits, it’s over.

U PARADE/WATCHERS PHANTASY

Little is known about U. The anonymous London producer has been releasing floaty, distorted electronic productions since 2013, however seemingly retreats after each release. Living up to their elusive reputation, this new two-tracker for Phantasy is equally hard to place. The first offering from this genre-spanning split is Parade, a near-15-minute odyssey which begins with a bubbling, almost aqueous synthline, before plunging you into blissfully murky techno depths halfway through, and later forming into gorgeous droplets of ambient sound design. Watchers , on the other hand, is an only slightly more direct affair: dark, percussive synthesisers pierce the washes of ambience underneath, giving the project a satisfyingly glitchy edge. Music that is difficult to grasp, yet keeps enticing you to reach out. – R.G.A.

SMERZ ALLINA SHOPPING RECORDS

On new EP Allina , Norwegian duo Smerz lean into fantasy. The project is named after the album’s ‘cocreator’ Allina, a faceless, entirely fabricated 00s-era pop star. Over its eight tracks, Smerz soundtrack Allina’s dramatic rise to stardom with a sardonic wink, complete with interspersed interludes of flashing cameras, choreo counts and TMZ-style commentary. On The Stylist , Smerz channel Britney’s seminal Blackout , both sonically and thematically; New Shoes tries on industrial minimalism; and Dangerous is pure early noughties pop girl R&B. Lead single My Producer is an instant highlight, with moody percussion setting the foundation for iconic deadpan lines such as, “cute when I do vocals ”. Like its muse, Allina is a layered, slightly detached examination of the celebrity culture that we just can’t look away from. – R.B.

DJ GONZ

MESSENGER WAIN RECORDS

There’s not a lot of information currently surrounding mysterious newcomer DJ Gonz. We know that he coruns a label called Seln Recordings (previously named SELCHP until its namesake, a waste incineration plant in south London, surprisingly demanded a name change). His music is moody and low-lit, recalling the darkside, paranoiac sonics of early DMZ records – albeit with the pace pushed up to a 160bpm 4/4 stomp. His first few releases caught the attention of tastemakers like Batu, Debonair and AYA. Now, his debut LP arrives as further evidence of an exciting new artist hitting a creative purple patch, carving out a new and unmistakably London niche of post-dubstep club music. – O.H.

FEATURED REVIEW

【Words】 John Thorp

The London duo’s fourth album sets wry character studies to the meandering, widescreen guitar sounds they’ve been exploring in recent years. It’s their best work yet

The Sunset Violent is only the fourth album in Mount Kimbie’s 15-year history, yet it feels like members Kai Campos and Dom Maker have shapeshifted through underground culture with an enviable confidence. Having made the strongest of starts with 2010’s Crooks & Lovers , a ‘postdubstep’ classic that now feels far too flimsily categorised, the pair quickly evolved as songwriters, capturing the talents of a nascent King Krule on their unwieldy follow-up, Cold Spring Fault Less Youth . And that’s all before 2017’s Love What Survives , a fluid stylistic pivot that smoothly reset any expectations placed on the band. More guitar-led and unfashionably indie in sensibility upon its release, the LP’s feedback-washed riffs and wistful undercurrent seemed to trigger a yet another resurgence in British post-punk.

An imaginative stopgap in 2022 took the form of MK 3.5: Die Cuts / City Planning, which split the pair’s evocative production style into two mixes of original music; groggy, Dilla-oriented shapes from Maker, and murky London techno from Campos.

Both accomplished enough, neither proved as memorable as a large art installation promoting the project escaping down London’s Tottenham Court Road in high winds. Fortunately, this narrowly avoided disaster did not prove prophetic, and The Sunset Violet finds Kampos and Maker comfortably reunited and thriving in new registers.

Campos and Maker have always been able to perceive wider horizons. Accordingly, The Sunset Violent was recorded in California’s Yucca Valley, described by the band as a “surreal landscape” of endless blue skies by day, and UFO sightings by night. This fertile ground for inspiration is just an alien abduction away from Los Angeles, where Maker has been whipping up bonafide hits with the likes of James Blake, Travis Scott and Danny Brown.

Campos and Maker have seamlessly expanded their operation with two polymathic new additions: Andrea Balency-Béarn and Marc Pell, respectively a doctor in composition and one of Mica Levi’s longest-lasting collaborators. It’s a convincing experiment from the off. Opening track

The Trail is an organic and disarmingly lovely introduction that establishes the album’s signature 80s LinnDrum sound alongside Béarn’s own vocal hum, dancing together like blackbirds in the spring air.

Pitching up melodically somewhere between Tirzah and Pet Shop Boys’ wry poet Neil Tennant, Béarn’s singing is one of several unusual intersections that Campos and Maker balance impressively. Her lilting contributions perfectly round out the duo’s pleasingly distinct production, which, these days, sits in its own inexplicable space that converges the dusty jangle of the Cleaners from Venus with the textural futurism of Actress. Shipwreck buckles a little under the weight of its own ideas, before Got Me lays down duelling piano keys and a stuttering beat as Maker’s own voice wobbles out of comprehension, urgent in its contrasting minimalism. More than once, The Sunset Violent threatens to decay into dub and disarray, before blossoming with resurgent hope and bright, optimistic melodies. “Another date, I’ll kill myself,” Béarn sings with no little defiance on Dumb Guitar,

underscoring The Sunset Violent ’s commitment to overcoming the affecting personal obstacles detailed throughout supremely odd character study Fishbrain.

Their old mucker King Krule makes time to pop in, firstly in gnarly vintage form on the shoegazing, slightly superfluous Boxing, before making a magnificent return for Empty and Silent . Across a blissful six minutes, this closing passage finds all involved delivering their finest work, channelling the disco-not-disco of Maximum Joy, the alt-rock sprawl of Sonic Youth, and, crucially, embracing ennui born only of experience. Under the guidance of Campos and Maker, observations such as “a lot of British films are only shot in one or two rooms ” hint at those aforementioned wider horizons of art and experience, lifting the banal to the sublime with a classic DIY philosophy. By trusting their own collaborative spirit and hard-earned wisdom, Mount Kimbie’s inward search expands their sound beautifully outwards.

RETROSPECTIVE SO IT GOES RATKING

LABEL: HXC/XL RECORDINGS

ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE: APRIL 8, 2014

Ratking’s incendiary – and only – album not only captured the sound of a fertile rap scene in flux, but seared a path for unrelenting experimentation

【Words】 Mike Vinti

“I remember my history teacher talking about the first Ramones record. When that dropped, that’s what New York sounded like. It was the moment. [So It Goes] is like that” – Patrick ‘Wiki’ Morales

In the early 2010s, the future of rap was up for grabs. The decade before had seen the mainstream dominated by indie sleaze and radio-satisfying Jay-Z tracks, leaving many MCs to explore new sonic territories in underground movements across the States. Whether in Detroit with Danny Brown, Atlanta with Migos and Young Thug, New York with A$AP Mob, or out west with Clipping, experimental hip-hop was bubbling with possibilities. The sounds were as diverse as their creators, but what united them all was boundless ambition. The next wave of rappers and producers didn’t want to inherit hip-hop’s crown, they wanted it melted down and made-to-measure.

Around this time, Patrick ‘Wiki’ Morales and Hakeem ‘Hak’ Lewis were in their senior year of high school in New York when their older friend Eric Adiele, a.k.a. producer Sporting Life, moved into an apartment on 140th and Broadway. Blessed with a new hangout spot, the trio did what any musicobsessed kids would do and started a band. “There was a lot of experimental rap out, but we didn’t think it was on the level,” says Morales of the group’s founding attitude. “So we started Ratking. We wanted to be unfuckwithable.”

The trio spent the next two years writing demos, skateboarding and playing shows every weekend. Soon, they caught the attention of indie giant XL Recordings. In 2014, Ratking released So It Goes , their debut – and, to date, only – album; an in-your-face blast of maximalist rap that owes as much to punk as it does to hip-hop.

In interviews promoting the release, Ratking gleefully aligned themselves with hardcore as much as they did rap. Throughout So It Goes , Morales in particular delivers many of his verses with the ferocity of a hardcore vocalist inciting a circle pit, while Adiele cites the influence of cult NYC underground acts like A.R.E. Weapons. Ratking brought this ethos

to life at shows: Morales and Lewis stalking the lip of the stage, the former occasionally beating himself over the head with the mic. “We almost caved the floor in at our release show!” Adiele admits. “We tried to mitigate the energy so it didn’t overflow and someone gets punched in the face.”

On So It Goes , that raucous energy manifests through vocal samples, skittish footwork drums, skullrattling 808s and bratty adlibs stacked on top of one another like a lamppost plastered in basement show flyers. Take the opening bars of fan favourite Canal : distorted sirens jostle for space with thudding drums and tinny hi-hats as Morales and Lewis holler, “Cuh-cuh! New Ratking! Canal canal! ” By the time Lewis rolls in with his infinitely chantable “ what a mess but yet you continue to feed !” it’s impossible not to move. Canal also contains the record’s mission statement. As the beat dissolves, leaving the two MCs running a capella, Morales declares: “Think the city has let up? Better check up/ Kids that are fed up/ Instead of bitching and moaning, they get buck and get up.” If you thought the NYC rap game had lost its edge, think again.

So It Goes is littered with allusions to the city. The title track conjures the perpetual movement of day-to-day life, flipping a piece of hip-hop history with its refrain of, “Six million trains to ride, choose one/ Six million stories to tell, whose one? ” Likewise, Snow Beach takes its name from a Ralph Lauren collection, a fashion brand whose association with New York rap goes back decades (think Raekwon flexing a Snow Beach jacket in the video for Can It All Be So Simple) “I remember my history teacher talking about the first Ramones record,” Morales reflects. “When that shit dropped, that’s what New York sounded like. It was the moment. [So It Goes] is like that.”

Like the famed NYC punks before them, Ratking confronted the city’s ills. Remove Ya , for example, is built around chirping police sirens, as Lewis and Morales detail police brutality. The track concludes with one of the album’s most affecting moments, the beat cutting out as a female voice recites a chilling nursery rhyme: “N-Y-P-D miny mo/ Catch a Black boy by his toe/ Hang him put him up for show”.

So It Goes also draws on influence from further afield. Protein is a blast of Chicago footwork synths and drum programming, with Lewis and Morales constantly shifting flows to ride the jittering beat. At one point, Lewis starts singing, his serene vocals drifting above the chaos beneath. Look closely, and you’ll even notice the similarities between the album’s cover art and DJ Rashad’s seminal Double Cup. The members of Ratking also had real love for music coming out of the U.K. On lead single, So Sick Stories , Londoner King Krule lends his baritone to a hook that details a grey city “in between the concrete and the mist ” that sounds familiar to residents of both metropolises. This transatlantic fusion is reflected in Adiele’s production as well: a stilted piano melody points to the uncut samples of 36 Chambers -era Wu-Tang, while fluttering drums hint at the U.K. jungle breaks that the producer obsessed over.

Whichever side of the Atlantic you were on at the time, So It Goes is a snapshot of a music culture that’s all but disappeared. Streaming and social media had yet to dominate people’s listening habits, and the now-customary meteoric rise of artists – particularly in hip-hop – was still a novelty. Through this lens, it seems almost inevitable that – despite 2015 follow-up EP 700 Fill hinting at more to come – So It Goes would be Ratking’s only album. “Even the title is referencing time passing,” Adiele says with a touch of resignation. “The lesson is to be OK with the idea that nothing ever stays the same. It’s perfect as is, you know?”

annotated

ROMANTICISM HANA VU

MAEGAN HOUANG: In 2021, I got a familiar email: “We have a very low budget, but we’d love for you to direct a music video for an indie artist.” I almost always say no to these emails, in part because I don’t connect with the music enough to justify the amount of work that goes into something inevitably unpaid. But when I heard Keeper by Hana Vu, I loved it. I came up with an executable idea faster than I ever have in my entire life. She came to me last year to do another video for Romanticism and I connected with the music so much that I suggested I come onboard as the album’s creative director instead. Hana put together a moodboard for the album. She included a few paintings, such as Stańczyk by Jan Matejko. I was struck by the contrast between the jester’s glum face and his jovial appearance. He looks utterly alone and contemplative. People celebrate in the background, but he does not participate. That feeling of isolation and alienation pervades Hana’s music.

MARY BANAS: Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi is the direct reference for the cover image. It was controversial when it was commissioned in the 1600s and is, remarkably, still a poignant image today. In this version, Hana is beheaded instead of Holofernes. One of the first things Maegan said to me about Gentileschi’s work is “people assume this is Caravaggio” but it was actually painted by a young woman. In the Gentileschi version, Judith appears to be moved by genuine passion, while the Judith in Caravaggio’s rendering – called Judith Beheading Holofernes – appears polite and gentle in comparison. Hana is the version of the painting with true feeling. Except, in this case, Hana is Holofernes, bleeding out on the table after being decapitated with her own sword.

M.H: The way young love can destroy you reoccurs in Hana’s work. This is a visual representation of being destroyed by love. When you get heartbroken at the age of 19, it feels like the worst thing in the world. It can feel like dying. After all, she called her album Romanticism, and there was something fun in choosing paintings from the Baroque era that still embodied the high drama of the Romantic era. Some scholars think the word Baroque originated from the Portuguese for “flawed pearl” and I love that as an analogy for how I see Hana’s music. She isn’t afraid to lay her vulnerabilities bare and yet wraps those flaws in epic songwriting.

M.B: The Baroque period was all about depicting the climax of a story with lots of detail. The lighting is also an iconic element, with extreme contrast of light and dark used to dial up the spectacle. This Romanticism artwork is really remarkable because, at first glance, you might not even realise it’s a photo. The depth and richness of the images draws you in. Hana’s record tells stories that are both personal and universal to anyone who has been in their 20s. It’s a richly layered musical work, and together, they create a dramatic masterpiece.

M.H: Hana’s album encapsulates the angst we all feel growing up, but then ultimately repress in adulthood. I feel alive and seen listening to her music, especially as a fellow Asian-American woman. We’re rarely depicted in lauded works of art and I loved the idea of inserting her into the centre of these iconic images.

We shot over two days, relying on backdrops and minimal pieces of furniture to recreate the set. The greatest challenge was blacking out the large windows

in the office so we could achieve the appropriate lighting effect. I shot the photos on a Phase One IQ3 camera and used 80mm and 120mm lenses to help make the image feel compressed, like a painting. We used a medium format camera because the huge sensor gave us an incredible amount of tonal information we could use to manipulate the light like a painter. The main effect we didn’t do on the day was the blood, which Jeff Desom (Everything Everywhere All at Once VFX artist) painted digitally.

M.B: The Daubenton font was picked for its knife-like attributes. It looks like it was chiselled into stone because it was – it’s a revival typeface based on the letters found carved into marble at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. I also like the typeface because it gives the impression that it contains the wisdom of the ages, but also likes to fuck around. It also only comes in capital letters, which seemed apt for the immensity of the album.

There are little Easter eggs in this project. Hana’s handwriting is featured in the bottom right corner of the cover in silver metallic as an homage to an artist’s signature on canvas. If you look closely at the record sleeve, you can read ‘care’ etched on one side of the blade and ‘love’ on the other. I was inspired by how painters would sometimes hide their name or an image of themselves in their work. I was also thinking about how the painting David and Goliath was only identified as being by Gentileschi in 2020 after restorers discovered her name on Goliath’s blade. On the album, Hana sings “what is care anyway? ” and that is a question that really stuck with me. When a relationship starts or ends, your idea of ‘care’ can shift your reality in a major way. We present a weapon engraved with the language of tenderness, which is the type of sharp contradiction Hana masters on Romanticism.

DESIGNER MARY BANAS, CREATIVE DIRECTOR

AND PHOTOGRAPHER MAEGAN

HOUANG

THE GRIND

Artist Music

【Illustration】

Bobby Redmond

METH MATH’S TOSTILOCOS

SUGGESTED MUSICAL PAIRING: MERMEHLADA

We chose this recipe because it’s a very common Mexican munchie and it would be really cool if the rest of the world had the opportunity to try it! We love our hot sauces and chips here in Mexico, and though this recipe might not be the healthiest thing you can eat, there are a few tweaks you can make to turn it into a more nutritious snack. There are even some vegan versions of this recipe. We recommend pairing this snack with a beer or two.

INGREDIENTS

11 oz bag of Tostitos salsa verde chips (you can also use Doritos or your favourite tortilla chips)

½ cup of chopped jícama, also known as Mexican turnip (you can also substitute with pears, green apples or daikon radishes)

1 chopped cucumber

½ cup of chopped mango

½ cup of Japanese-style peanuts

¼ cup of tamarind candy

1 lime

Chamoy sauce to taste

Hot sauce of choice to taste

Tajín seasoning to taste

DIRECTIONS

Dice the jícama, cucumber and mango into small pieces. Cut your lime into quarter wedges.

Cut open the Tostitos bag sideways. Add the chopped jícama (or substitute), cucumber and mango as toppings.

Add your chamoy sauce, hot sauce, tajín and squeeze lime all over. Enjoy!

CHUPETONES IS OUT NOW VIA IN REAL LIFE

PIN-DROP

Chicago footwork practitioner Heavee makes music for body and mind. Though his first encounters with the storied genre were as a dancer – just like many of his producer peers – Heavee’s musical career took off with the 2018 DJ Rashad collaboration, It’s Wack; a spacious yet addictively frantic track that conjured a mellifluous, rhythmically elaborate sonic world (fittingly, it also featured on Flying Lotus’ Grand Theft Auto jukebox). His recent album, Unleash, elevates this intentional approach with complex production techniques such as modelling, modulation and synthesis, but never at the expense of his melodic human touch. For Pin-Drop, he takes us to the studio full of warm memories that inspire his work.

UNLEASH IS OUT NOW VIA HYPERDUB

HEAVEE

WHERE ARE WE?

In my home studio. I picked this room because it’s my “zen zone”, as my mum calls it! But it really is – I can come in and be creative in any way I want.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE THIS PLACE?

When you enter the room, the first thing you’ll notice are colourful paintings on the wall, as well as a huge Jet Grind Radio -inspired piece by BE3K. There are Kali Audio speakers, a laptop and a Black Lion Audio interface on a red horizontal bookshelf full of records, old and new – some I’ve collected since Covid, some are gifted from my grandma. The table next to it is covered in synth samplers and drum machines. When you walk in, you will either think I have a synth shopping addiction, or be in awe of my setup. To my left is a couch with a Turkish Airlines blanket draped lazily across (the blanket is a souvenir from my first-ever international booking in Vienna). I usually lie down here and listen to music – it all feels so immersive.

WHY IS THIS LOCATION SO SIGNIFICANT TO YOU?

It’s full of my memories: previous releases, show posters, friends’ records. It’s my personal space; usually there’s no one in here but me and my cat. We relax here. I’m able to get my wild ideas out in this room with zero judgement. It’s my happy place, for sure.

WHAT DOES A TYPICAL DAY HERE LOOK LIKE FOR YOU?

Usually, I find myself jamming and connecting synthesisers and drum machines in the hope of finding ways to sequence them together, rather than actually creating and finishing music. I often take breaks to play Fortnite whenever anything gets repetitive. Sometimes, I’ll turn my Denon DJ controller on and just mix. But the most typical day would be me in my chair, going through unfinished projects, vibing, editing and smoking.

WHAT’S YOUR LASTING MEMORY OF THIS PLACE?

Christmas just passed. I had everyone from my friend group over to my place for a pyjama and potluck party. Towards the end of the night, we sang karaoke in the studio. It was so much fun and totally impromptu, but it’s these moments that warm my heart. I’m a lush for stuff like this.

【Words】 Rachel Grace Almeida

Heavee