Flooded Hallways – Painstiller
Simple visual for new Flooded Hallways track lets the lyric from Deeq speak. ‘Painstiller’ is lifted from the new album KURU. Exclusively available HERE.
Simple visual for new Flooded Hallways track lets the lyric from Deeq speak. ‘Painstiller’ is lifted from the new album KURU. Exclusively available HERE.
If you’re anything like 90% of Brits, the past few months have been pretty heavy. With the world reopening (or at least this odd little island), the temptation to enjoy freedom through a haze of cider and cheap hash has probably never been stronger. Hip hop goes hand in hand with that festival feeling.
But it’s easy to forget that not every night has to be debauched to be fun. Sometimes just trying to spit rhymes with your friends over a beat is more than enough. So is the case with the latest EP from the Gold on the Mixer crew.
Even though the bars cover everything from poverty to drug abuse to folklore (and there’s no doubt the studio got pretty hazy at times), there’s a sense that Always is about the art. In other words, it’s the result of pals just hanging out, trying to outdo each other.
Gold on the Mixer regulars like Deeq, Amos, Jaroo and Evolucian make an appearance along with new heads Airklipz and EF Knows. Maybe it’s the lyrical dexterity that so many nu-skool rappers seem to shun. Or maybe it’s the joy of hearing rappers trading bars in a back-and-forth like they’re playing a block party in late ‘80s Brooklyn. Whatever it is, it’s refreshing.
You can picture the boys in the studio, working up the wildest rhymes and laying down beats like a gauntlet. And the beats are slick as a seals fish supper. Whether it’s Noisiboi summoning the spirit of The Herbaliser in opener ‘Lace It’ or Palmer Eldritch looping some tasty blues licks on ‘Kings’, the GOTM crew are leading the way in immaculately manicured beats.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your freedom with a bag of cans (cans optional). But sometimes, you can have just as good a night immersing yourself in the unfettered, unfiltered joy of spitting bars with your mates.
Always is out now on Gold on the Mixer.
Seriously heavy posse cut from the Gold On The Mixer family. Taken from the label’s debut posse EP Always (available for pre-order here). The visual for ‘Tellem’ shot by our own Dfacer features bars by Amos, Deeq, Evolucian, Airklipz, Benny Diction, Jaroo & EF Knows. Dope instrumental courtesy of Zatoichi’s Ears.
Did you know, a study by Microsoft found that the human attention span has dropped to eight seconds – shrinking nearly 25% in just a few years. Blame it on the 24/7 news cycle, social media, video games. It doesn’t matter.
What does matter is what it does to our perception of art. Today, people talk about the need for art (and specifically music) to be accessible. That’s fine when it means jettisoning the highfalutin pretension of yesteryear. But it increasingly seems to mean pandering to the lowest common denominator.
That’s why it’s so refreshing hearing a release from the Gold on the Mixer crew. The rappers and producers have been pushing hip hop into strange, new frontiers for a long time, and Obsidian – the latest album from Deeq – is no exception.
It doesn’t come pre-packaged for radio consumption. In fact, it sticks two fingers to the entire idea of easily-consumed junk-rap. No, this hip hop requires time, patience and a willingness to sift through near-impenetrable bars for meaning.
Although similar in style to Seraphim & Apollyon, Deeq’s split with labelmate FlowTecs, Obsidian feels less angry but no less cynical. The ten tracks weave a claustrophobic soundscape, a world where quasi-religious iconography and kitchen sink social drama sit side by side.
Opener ‘Virtue’ bristles with barely contained rage, and that theme carries through the album. At times Obsidian feels like a Cormac McCarthy novel – and that’s not just because it’s unremittingly grim. Just as McCarthy explores universal stories through micro-narratives, Deeq uses opaque imagery and obscure allusions to explore questions about humanity, technology and spirituality.
‘Oxblood Sweater’ exemplifies the approach. Deeq blends mythical symbolism with contemporary pop culture references like a Tolkein crossed with an Instagram algorithm.
Zatoichi’s Ears is on hand again with the beats; a coarse mix of desolate piano loops and looming synth-strings. The lack of percussion (bar ‘Oxblood Sweater’) softens the tone but does nothing to subdue the urgency imbued by Deeq’s delivery. Instead, Obsidian’s production mirrors the bleak future painted in Deeq’s soundscape; a Blade Runner future with the moral ambiguity turned up to 11.
Closer ‘Ark of the Testimony’ brims with a defiant optimism; not in the idea that nothing bad will happen, but that you’ll be able to weather whatever comes. It’s not the happy ending you’d get from a Hollywood movie. But if you’re willing to dedicate your attention to the world Deeq paints, you’ll be rewarded with something far deeper than any YouTube algorithm could ever serve up.
Obsidian is out now on Gold on the Mixer.
Controversial opinion: Lockdown has been good for hip hop. I don’t mean the closure of clubs, the loss of local cyphers or the endless fucking parade of ‘Quarantine bars’ popping up on your Facebook. But for some, the lockdown has presented an opportunity to sharpen their skills.
Take Zatoichi’s Ears (AKA Elliot Fresh AKA Intricate Diligence, etc.). The producer/rapper has been plying his trade for a while. But lockdown has given him time to dig further into the niche he first started carving back in 2018 with In Syruppp.
Now he’s back with Shikomi-Zue Cuts Vol 1, a mini-mixtape featuring some of his fellow GOTM labelmates. And while most of us have spent lockdown stuck on never-ending Zoom calls and drinking blurring the line between day-drinking and alcoholism, Zatoichi’s Ears has been putting in work.
The obsession with obscure kung-fu films and Eastern culture suggests easy comparisons with Wu-Tang. But where the east coast pioneers used the symbolism as a springboard to discuss the black experience in America, Zatoichi’s Ears uses it to explore humanity’s collective place in the cosmic cycle.
Alone that could be pretty heavy. But it’s counterbalanced by some quintessential English humour and more contemporary pop culture references than an episode of Spaced.
‘Shao Kahn’ is a textbook example. Mortal Kombat samples battle with bars about Bela Lugosi – courtesy of Brighton rapper Larry Diamond – to create a hieroglyphic hodgepodge of eastern mysticism and tacky nostalgia. On ‘Know’, rappers Twizzy & Deeq trade bars about turning adversity into life lessons over a looping piano melody. You could spend hours trying to decipher the opaque symbolism of the lyrics, but it’s easier to just sit back and enjoy the liquid-smooth flow.
So yeah, lockdown might suck, but it’s also what you make of it. Just be glad some people choose to make beats and spit bars. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take another 3 months of quarantine before he drops Vol 2.
Shikomi-Zue Cuts Vol 1 drops Friday 26th June on Gold on the Mixer.
What is hip hop in 2019? You might think that’s an unnecessarily conceptual way to begin a review (and you might be right). But it’s something you can’t help but consider when you listen to Haller’s Orca, the latest LP from Elliot Fresh.
Sure, it features all the elements required to qualify as hip hop: slick bars, wavy instrumentals, moody beats. But it’s also an existential exploration of the human condition -the Haller of the title referring to the protagonist of an early 20th century novel on the nature of suffering, transcendence and healing. It’s precisely this willingness to push the envelope that makes you question where the boundaries of the genre begin and end.
The conflict between the selfish and selfless aspects of our personalities informs the basis of Haller’s Orca. If that sounds a bit heavy, you’d be right. But music only survives when artists are willing to take listeners outside of their comfort zone. Fresh and his Gold on the Mixer compadres thrive when doing just that.
‘H. Haller’ captures this approach perfectly; equal parts abstract wanderings and sonic fire. Who else could deliver bars like: “Ayahuasca rational, mastering abstraction of Sisyphean physics / Giving up the ghost, living free of limits” and make it work? In the hands of anyone else, these bars could sound like the beat poetry of a second-year philosophy student, but Fresh’s laser-focus and verbal dexterity carries it off.
That’s not to say Haller’s Orca is all philosophical contemplation. Tracks like ‘Sheikah & Yiga (Ft. Rawz)’ and ‘Notes (Ft. Benny Diction)’ follow a more familiar boom-bap formula. ‘Heart’, meanwhile, blends guest bars from Kaimbr, Deeq, Tha God Fahim, Flowtecs & Subtex with a simple soul riff to craft one of the tightest tracks of 2019. These songs feel almost like a novelty on Haller’s Orca, where hallucinatory soundscapes rub shoulders with obscure literary references like a Fresan fever dream.
That’s due in large part to the experimental nature of the beats. The rapper and producer has a knack for weaving an eclectic range of instrumentals into stark soundscapes, and Haller’s Orca is no different. Samples of psych-rock legend Arthur Lee sit alongside cosmic beats and smooth soul samples.
There aren’t many artists today willing to ask big questions in their work. But Fresh delights in exploring the human condition. Above all, it’s refreshing to be trusted with lyrics that don’t offer up an immediate answer. If you’re looking for big bars fuelled by braggadocio and traditional hip hop tropes, look elsewhere. But if you’re open to expanding your mind and exploring how far hip hop can go, then Haller’s Orca is a good place to start your journey.
Haller’s Orca is out now on Gold on the Mixer.
God is Dead, or at least he is if you believe Friedrich Nietzsche. And while rappers Flowtecs & Deeq aren’t exactly here to convince you otherwise, their new EP proves there’s still some truth in rituals of the past.
There’s an incense aroma of twisted celestial imagery throughout Seraphim & Apollyon, but Songs of Praise this ain’t. Religious iconography stands shoulder to shoulder with intricate bars of Hellbound blasphemy. Biblical allegory is employed as a vehicle to explore modern-day struggles like relationships, mental health and the creative process.
Flowtecs, of north London, and Deeq of Oxford, are a match made in Zion; the two emcees spin lyrical webs so effortlessly you wonder if they aren’t on some God-given mission. Tracks like ‘Katana Headsplash’ cut through you like, well, a katana, while the gut-punch hook behind ‘Devil Slang’ recalls early Task Force at their best.
Rapid fire bars and demonic hooks set Seraphim & Apollyon apart from the crowd, but it’s in the lyrics that Flowtecs & Deeq really excel. The prophetic imagery behind ‘Haunted Memoirs’ could sound gimmicky in the hands of lesser rappers, but when Flowtecs spits: “Reality scriptures // you man have twisted facts from the fiction // I spit that real shit in any instant” it works.
Of course, none of this works if the instrumentals aren’t up to scratch, but producer Palmer Eldritch hits every note. The boom-bap beats circle chopped up soul samples (with more than a whiff of Wu-Tang) and medieval-inspired instrumentals à la Jedi Mind Tricks.
OK, so the bars spat by Flowtecs & Deeq are far from angelic, but there’s no denying the power of religious iconography here. Like all religious texts, Seraphim & Apollyon works best when you don’t take it literally and recognise the deeper meaning behind it.
Seraphim & Apollyon drops May 1st on Gold on the Mixer. Pre-order it here.