King Krule—Man Alive!

Archy Marshall cuts the same silhouette as Bowie’s Thin White Duke—but the similarities don’t end there. Born stone’s throws from each other (respectively in Southwark and Lambeth), both artists transcend their earthliness, defy categorisation, and are fans of the sax. Marshall is larger, and smaller, than life; transparent, would he not be so fascinating to observe.

Man Alive! has the difficult task of following Marshall’s lauded (but still not-lauded-enough) The Ooz—a 2017 album which assembled all the best things about roughly twenty different genres into a cohesive whole. Man Alive! is constructed from the same blueprint, but with some noodly edges shaved off; a leaner, tighter, and more focused piece of work than its predecessor.

Its early energy is explosive and irresistible. An opening salvo of four or five songs is almost impossibly exciting, peaking with the beat-driven ‘Stoned Again’. Replete with Marshall’s psychotic backing vocals and thundering drums and bass, it’s a sensory overload in the best possible way.

The adrenaline rush soon submits to a cool beauty, an unravelling of Marshall’s anger and its replacement by gentle washes of hope. It’s an unfamiliar mood being explored here, but its first steps are far from tentative. A throughline of discordance tells us this could collapse at any time—who hasn’t sabotaged their own happiness at one point or another?—but the big take-homes from Man Alive! are its lush crescendos; hypnotic, looping chord sequences; and its uplifting lyrical content (“don’t forget you’re not alone”).

The looseness of tracks like ‘Slinky’ will lead them to be overlooked. But any fan of The Ooz will know that Marshall’s vignettes and diversions are often just as rewarding as the keyframe cuts of his albums. Man Alive is absolutely stuffed with these little golden nuggets, which add so much character to an album already bursting with it.

Marshall is able to create music which sounds global and local, ageless and contemporary, mystical and empathetic. The boy can do it all, and is destined to go down as one of the greats—so don’t be one of those thickos who wasn’t listening at the time.

Cellular is out now on XL Recordings/Matador Records. Directed and animated by Jamie Wolfe Ink and paint assistant - Annapurna Kumar https://www.jamiewolfe.c...

Man Alive! is available for purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Bucky—Come Back

London is a city factioned by class and cultural minutiae. It’s the rope in a tug-of-war between natives and a swelling crowd of commuters, newcomers and tourists. Bikelife rideouts strive to reclaim gentrified central streets. Chicken Shop Date earns ad revenue off blatant class tourism. I once spoke to a girl who moved to Catford because it had “cat” in the name.

Bucky’s Come Back is a sprawling document of a South London kept hidden from visitors; a place of loneliness and kinship, danger and beauty. But it’s also kind of a break-up album, eulogising a city that once valued its inhabitants, and exploring the pain of letting that go. ‘Had to Leave’ repurposes its vocal hook beautifully, as words once aimed at an ex-lover are redirected to a birthplace.

‘Knives & Daggers’ is the first of many tracks on Come Back which address the city’s knife crime “epidemic”—something national press describe like a virus, but for which recommend no curative measures. The track moves in swathes of gorgeous, Vangelis-esque ambience, an elegiac counterpoint to the beat-driven material around it. It exalts the rapper MDot, who was stabbed to death some years ago but whose death is still just as keenly felt.

More ambient tracks pepper the album, and are hugely effective when they show up. ‘Estate’ yawns with space like the roads of a community in which no one drives, with gentle blasts of what can only be described as glitch. It’s an otherworldly track—the only thing which bears comparison is some Caretaker material (particularly Everywhere at the end of time — Stage 5).

‘Pirates’ immediately follows that track—a nostalgia-packed banger that pays tribute to London’s pirate radio stations. It’s a scene which is very much still alive, instantly accessible online, yet nowadays only recognised by the mainstream in parody—like Kurupt FM’s four-stars-from-the-Guardian “podkast”. The track features some shell-casing tinkles as percussion, one of a few nods Bucky makes here to future garage poster boy Burial. But while Come Back can lean on some stereotypical garage sounds, it has a richness and ambition entirely of its own. ‘Angel’ is practically orchestral, filled out with rich string samples and yearning bass. ‘Walk Away’ is like RnB vaporwave; a track almost as simple in concept as it is heartbreakingly glorious in execution.

The effect is something like Gaspar Noé’s Into the Void; a bodiless and sometimes invasive bird’s eye view of a city both dark and luminous. Come Back is a hugely ambitious album which sticks the landing, leaves no street unexplored, and should probably be on the citizenship test.

Come Back is available to purchase and stream here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Grimes—Miss Anthropocene

This year, a 2010 documentary by Canadian filmmaker Emily Kai Bock, Human Heart, resurfaced on youtube. Its subject is Claire Boucher (Grimes), then a gawky astrophysics flunker trying to chip a sideline for herself in the music industry. She appeared a character adjunct from society; buffeted by dreams and blissfully unaware of the shape of things. Ten years have passed since then—and Boucher and the world’s relationship has grown more complicated.

The Grimes of Human Heart is unrecognisable, replaced by a pop-star ice queen who wears Iris Van Herpen gowns in her music videos and tags Balenciaga in her sponsored Instagram posts. Boucher never aimed to be a relatable or socially-conscious artist—instead aiming for pixie/juggalo cross-breed—but she wasn’t a superficial one either. So this flouncing around in exclusive designer wear still feels oddly like a betrayal of principles.

In fact, Boucher has pretty much become a walking principle-betrayer. “I don’t want to be infantalised because I refuse to be sexualised” is a commendable statement—one that looks really good as the headline of a news article. But it feels rich coming from a performer who deliberately babies up her voice when she sings and had a camera rotate around her PVC-clad arse in the ‘We Appreciate Power’ video.

The obvious counterpoint is that Boucher was making a critical and much more specific statement about the music industry’s treatment of female artists. The elephant in the room: multi-billionaire Elon Musk—Boucher’s partner and modern-day Howard Hughes. When Musk was publicly called out on refusing to let his workers unionise, Boucher swept in to deflect the tweet-storm and defend him. It seems, for Boucher, the only imbalances worth correcting are those which affect her industry gal-pals and the surrounding cultural elite.

On Miss Anthropocene, Grimes presents a mass-appeal repackaging of Nick Land’s accelerationist philosophy, arguing that we should welcome the advent of climate change. In some way, it’s the same aloof, playful Grimes of ten years ago—but one who is directly addressing some rather more serious topics. “Wouldn’t it be fun if Dune was real”, the starry-eyed Grimes of Halfaxa, is a lot more palatable of a sci-fi conceit to accept than “we are all about to be annihilated in an ecological apocalypse haha”. It might not be so bad if Boucher wasn’t under the same roof as someone who could make a fucking difference.

I’m sure most positive criticism around Miss Anthropocene will focus on its production. But that’s really easy to get right when you have a thousand times the budget as everyone else.

Miss Anthropocene feels like a compromised product—something which has no concern for people, but still waters itself down for their approval. And Boucher herself has become harder to market as she has become more famous; a contradictory, nonsensical person who has been saddled with celebrity, and is now expected to take stances on things. But which is she feigning: indifference or sincerity?

You can find a download/streaming link for this one yourselves—she doesn’t need our help.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Deena Abdelwahed—Dhakar

Deena Abdelwahed’s Dhakar finds complexity through a stacking of simple beats and phrases. This EP follows the massive Khonnar, and continues that album’s tendency towards polyrhythms and atonality, which rumble beneath beefy lines of instantly gratifying club ecstasy. ‘Ah’na Hakkeka’, which opens this release, luxuriates in allowing its faces to coalesce—but when they do, it’s transportive; the same rush as a brostep drop. Abdelwahed achieves, through restraint, what has driven many producers to excess.

Two more coalescent pieces of Abdelwahed’s music are its contemporary and traditional methods. ‘Insaniyiti’ makes a spectacle of darkness; a compact cousin to Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s ‘Mladic’ which similarly hijacked the grandeur of traditional Arabic music and twisted it into something sinister. Abdelwahed does not deliver an insincere “fusion” that waters down the essence of traditional music for a global audience—she repurposes, recontextualises and transforms her samples, as any producer worth their salt should.

A separation between the two elements is maintained through some ingenious production. Bright drums, handclaps, and synths buzz like midges over a swamp of murky low frequencies. Dhakar is crisp, intricate and precise as a machine but keeps some of that handmade sloppiness that accompanies live performance. Where the boundary between these two styles sits is unclear; timbres blur in an inscrutable haze. But the overall effect is one of cloistered unity—like two rooms separated by glass, two yards separated by chain-link. The boundary is present but porous.

A growing portfolio of studio work and some stellar mixes have quickly established Abdelwahed as a pioneer in her field. She has a keen understanding of what makes a good set. But she also has a desire to expand far beyond that, stretching towards a future that she tightens focus on with every release.

Dhakar is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe