064
Releases
07
05
AJ Tracey Secure The Bag! Self-Released
Marilyn Manson's tenth fulllength arrived at a time when he was undergoing an injury layoff, having been crushed underneath two huge handgun stage props at his recent New York concert. If he wasn't so lucky, the incident could have caused one of the most cruelly ironic rock ’n' roll deaths of all time, given that the spectre of gun violence has overhung so much of his career. It might have been a sign from above (or, rather, below) that the 48-year-old could do with dialling things down a notch. There's no evidence that he plans to do so on Heaven Upside Down, which feels in many ways like a kick against 2015's nuanced, brooding The Pale Emperor – a record that Manson already seems to be deeming unacceptably demure in recent interviews. This time round, the selfstyled God of Fuck is back in scattershot mode, which means that we get some stirring returns to visceral punk form. The incendiary single Kill4Me is a case in point, as is the noisy thrash of both the title track and Je$u$ Cri$i$. Elsewhere, the record lags, usually because either the sonic reference points feel too well-worn or the lyrics descend into banality – the repeated counting on opener Revelation #12 is tiresome before the first listen's even out. Longtime devotees won't care, but Manson's last album seemed to prompt a wider audience to sit up and take notice at the potential for stylistic maturity, and this feels like regression.
AJ Tracey has always done things his own way. Where featured artists are often enlisted to help draw interest from specific crowds, on Secure The Bag! – the latest in a series of independently-released EPs – JME, Florida’s Denzel Curry, 67 and Craig David play supporting roles, all of them nodding to AJ’s star quality, as opposed to taking the spotlight. Musically, the EP sways between the grime of his comeup and the hybrid, transatlantic rap sounds he’s been developing in recent years. The record kicks off with Blacked Out, the beat produced by grime’s hitmaker in chief, Sir Spyro, which sees AJ reflect on his come up — “I was just a hope-filled kid like you” — and take stock of his achievements so far, all delivered with the swagger and pomp of an MC who knows he’s levels above the competition. On tracks like luvd u and Bird Call, he tones down his flow, spitting over glossy rap beats amidst talk of girls, tour buses and FaceTime sessions, while Craig David collaboration You Don’t Know Me evokes memories of Tinie Tempah’s Channel U classic Wifey Riddim. It is in these moments that AJ’s true character really shines through. Whoever he’s recording with and however many bottles he’s got backstage, there’s always a sense he still loves to be at home and back amongst familiar surroundings. “Everything’s not what it seems/ you think that I’m living life stress free ‘coz I’ve got a new timepiece and it gleams/ but I’m really out tryna feed teams”. That said, for every sign of perceived vulnerability, AJ bites back ten times harder, as he does on Quarterback and Alakazam, which reaffirms his flair for oneliners — “I got hooks but I don’t go fishing/ Alakazam I make man go missing”. While it might have landed as his loudest statement yet, especially after debuting at No.13 on the UK Albums Chart completely independently, you get the sense that Secure The Bag! is only the beginning for an artist reaching for the top.
! Joe Goggins
! Tomas Fraser
Marilyn Manson Heaven Upside Down Loma Vista
08
07 08 Björk Utopia One Little Indian
Ploy Unruly EP Hemlock
REVIEWS
Having already notched up releases on Hessle Audio and Timedance, Ploy has now been invited into the fold of Untold’s Hemlock Recordings. The Bristol-based producer fits right into the narrative of these pillars of the scene, cherrypicking tropes from grime, jungle, techno, industrial and of course dubstep to make mutant club music as weird as it is moody. In some ways the formula is consistent with those first abstractions on the dubstep formula back in 2007-2008, but that doesn’t do these new productions any disservice. Garys rushes with the intensity of a peak time techno belter, but the gaudy synth splashes could easily be lifted from a rowdy grime beat. Unruly digs down into the kind of jagged rhythmical trysts that typify the deep end of a Ben UFO set, but in the end it’s Lost Hours that shines the brightest. In scuffed found sound loops and plaintive blobs of melody Ploy lets a little more of his own personality cut through. The club tracks are exemplary exercises in leftfield techno physicality, but this is a record where the B2 is set to stand the test of time. !
Oli Warwick
Lotto Boyzz Afrobbean Pitched Up / Sony
In an age of pervasive pessimism, ‘Utopia’ is a punchline. Human instinct is inexorably drawn towards the cynical, and idealism has become a byword for naivety. But the potential for personal Utopia exists within us all. On her ninth full-length, Björk presents her own vision of Utopia. This album will likely be viewed as a sister-piece to 2015's Vulnicura: a photorealistic portrait of the wake of heartbreak. The dawn after the darkness, Utopia is a document of existential rediscovery. For this LP, Björk formed, arranged and conducted a 12-piece orchestra of female Icelandic flute players. A far cry from Vulnicura’s string-drenched soundscapes, here field recordings and playful woodwind compositions give the album a celestial lightness. These elements are frequently undercut by brutalist industrial structures and glossy, synthetic textures, which hint at the reunion with collaborator Arca. In the conflation of these two extremes – the bucolic innocence of flute with Arca’s slash of electronic interference – you find the soundtrack to Utopia. Opener Arisen my senses is the synaesthetic overload of tearing open the curtains to a jubilant morning, and a grandiose introduction. A celebration of human connection becomes increasingly clear on the touch-tight Blissing me and, later, the almost giddy Features Creatures. During these tracks, the simplicity of new love at its purest is addressed with childlike wonder; the naivety of succumbing to perfection. The Gate traces a direct line from the last album to this: “My healed chest wound” (shown gaping on Vulnicura’s cover) “transformed into a gate. Where I receive love from, where I give love from.” But Utopia is far from a breezy, convivial counterpoint to Vulnicura’s stark introspection. Pulsating, 10-minute centrepiece Body Memory tramples flutes underfoot in favour of jarring cello arrangements, which in turn wrestle with barking samples and gothic choral swoops. It’s an acknowledgement of primal physicality (“my limbs and tongue take over like the ancestors before”). Its dense severity is almost – as Björk declares at one point – “Kafkaesque”. Loss, a collaboration with Tri Angle Records alumnus Rabit, degenerates into remorseless noise-techno. As neat as it might be to label Utopia perfect, it isn’t. It lacks Vulnicura’s sense of narrative, and the sound palette, for all its vitality, renders some passages amorphous, the flutes nearly losing their lightness. At points, Björk’s voice struggles to emerge. And with a running time near 70 minutes and little care given for formalities of structure, this ranks among her most esoteric creations. In essence, though, Utopia is another triumph. As a spectral choir of Björks breathily combine on miraculous final track Future Forever, ruminating on herself as lover and mother, it leaves an elegiac yet buoyant echo; lamenting a past self and celebrating the new with a potent message of hope over fear. Perhaps a belief in perfection is naivety, and the search for Utopia is a fool’s errand. But to give up that search is to give up too much.
It's been a big year for Lotto Boyzz and their sound. They’re part of a wave that’s been embraced by award bodies, the charts and mainstream listeners. J Hus’s Common Sense was nominated for the Mercury Prize, Yungen and Yxng Bane’s Bestie spent 12 weeks in the top 40, and four out of the five songs nominated for this year’s ‘Best Song’ MOBO Award fall into this category. But Lotto Boyzz' 'sound' still lacks an official title. Kojo Funds defines it as ‘afro-swing’, while Spotify’s go-to playlist with almost 90,000 followers is titled ‘afro bashment’. So Lotto Boyzz, the Birmingham duo who’ve racked up millions of YouTube views with catchy songs like Hitlist and Bad Gyal, chuck their hat into the ring with their debut EP Afrobbean, which they’ve ambitiously described as "the genre definition”. Some might argue that it’s just semantics. Either way, it doesn’t take away from the brilliance of their breakthrough project. The tape is short and sweet, featuring five tracks plus a remix of their hit No Don, which shook the clubs up all summer. With Afrobbean, they give us signature autotuned melodies and blends of popular Afrobeats, rap and grime while representing their Caribbean heritage (Ash’s family are from Montserrat and Lucas’s from Jamaica). Patios meets pidgin accents and rap meets reggae infusions. That’s Afrobbean.
Geraint Davies
! Hamda Issa-Salwe
!