Charli XCX – True Romance: Album Review

CHARLI XCX
True Romance
Atlantic
3.5/5

It’s likely you’ll recognise the voice without knowing the name. 20-year-old Charlotte Aitchison, aka Charli XCX, wrote and sang on Icona Pop’s late 2012 monster hit ‘I Love It’. Yet even if you somehow managed to avoid that track (where the hell have you been?!) the voice might seem familiar anyway, because she sounds a lot like any number of female pop stars making similar angsty electro, including Robyn, Ellie Goulding and Marina and her Diamonds.

If you can get past that, though, many of the songs on True Romance are actually very good. With ‘Nuclear Seasons’, the album starts in fine fashion. It sets the tone for a polished, upbeat collection of songs that disguise the heartbreak of the subject matter, in a manner and quality similar to Robyn’s ‘Dancing On My Own’. ‘Take My Hand’ is catchy club pop at its best. Driven by a fuzzy kick line, you can picture older teens singing “Don’t Go To Sleep / Let’s Go Out” into their hairbrushes between sips from their bottle of Lambrini and saying “like” a lot.

But as the album progresses, the songcraft diminishes. ‘So Far Away’ is among the misfires. The soft-spoken words over layered synths immediately reminded me of P.M. Dawn’s ‘Set Adrift On Memory Bliss’ and that cringey bit at the start of All Saints’ ‘Never Ever’. (Well, as Charli exclaimed on ‘I Love It’, she is a ‘90s bitch). Perhaps True Romance is best consumed as a 20-year-old themselves might do – just download the first four songs and add them to your iPod playlist.

Like a polished Grimes, Miss Aitchison has made an entertaining debut, but one that only occasionally raises its head above the competition in the crowded emo electro-pop marketplace.

Article published in The Brag, 29th April 2013
Photo by Stuart Sevastos

Five Things To Expect From Redfoo On The X Factor

The X Factor Australia chiefs have signed up Redfoo — of chart stars LMFAO — to judge and mentor on the new series of the glorified karaoke contest. That’s right: the eternal frat boy, who has in recent past thrust such crud upon the charts as ‘Sexy And I Know It’ and ‘Party Rock Anthem’, has been picked out as the right kind of human to spot and nurture musical talent, replacing Australian Idol alum Guy Sebastian.

Love him or loathe him, Redfoo promises to add a bit of spice to the show; Ronan Keating’s never sung an ode to tequila slammers, has he? Here are a few things we expect from the man when The X Factor returns to our screens in August.

Wear a badge or t-shirt emblazoned with song lyrics from his new single – Probability 90%

Ever the shrewd businessman, Redfoo never misses an opportunity for a decent plug. And plugging opportunities don’t come much better than primetime TV to your target teenage audience. And he has form, see…

‘Sexy And I Know It’. ‘Party Rock Anthem’. ‘Champagne Showers’

Mention “Vika” – Probability 70%

During the live stages of the show Redfoo’s shouty tennis star girlfriend Victoria Azarenka will be spending a fair bit of time playing tournaments in China. During the Australian Open in January TV viewers occasionally cooed at the sweet interplay between the two lovebirds, while others shouted “Get a room!” whenever they were caught on camera together. He likes to be courtside to support the current women’s number three whenever he can (and sometimes help her on court, too) so expect Redfoo to be cheering her from the judging panel’s desk.

Get his acts to perform a Motown cover – Probability 85%

Redfoo, real name Stefan Kendal Gordy, certainly has the pedigree to be a music impresario. His old man is none other than famed Tamla/Motown boss Berry Gordy, Jr. Part of his appeal to show producers is probably the access to Motown’s catalogue of monster soul hits. So expect to see attractive 17 year olds of questionable musical talent butchering classics by Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye , The Jackson 5 and The Supremes. And if Gordy’s been really smart it we might even get a special themed episode solely consisting of Motown covers. Might want to give that particular show a miss if you cherish Marvin’s silky delivery on ‘Heard It Through The Grapevine’ as much as I do.

Teach one of the other judges to party shuffle – Probability 80%

MOR borefest Ronan Keating party rocking? Would pay to see it. Dannii Minogue getting her shuffle on? One for the dads, that, and one to give Simon Cowell thrilling flashbacks. Like the kid I once saw at the SCG repeatedly doing the dance to ‘Gangnam Style’ for the half-cut crowd during a rain break, Redfoo seems incapable of keeping his party piece under wraps for too long.

He’s already taught the host of American Idol how to do it and Sam Stosur.

Drop names – Probability 80% per episode

Expect to hear Redfoo emit a variation on the following sentence frequently: “When I worked with (insert name of poor American pop/RnB/dance act here), it was like (insert naff anecdote here)”.

Redfoo and LMFAO’s list of collaborators reads like the worst top ten of the Millennium and includes DJs David Guetta, Chuckie and Steve Aoki; as well as rappers Pitbull, Flo-Rida and Lil Jon; not to mention J-Lo and Carly Rae Jepsen. It is very likely that in the spirit of plugging single sales and ego-boosting we will hear any/all of these names at some point.

Bonus Prediction – Lots of this

Article published by Junkee.com, 22nd April 2013

Pharoahe Monche: Live Review

PHAROAHE MONCH, @PEACE, NTSC
Oxford Art Factory
Saturday April 13

Walking into the Oxford Art Factory to hear Ann Peebles’ ‘Somebody’s On Your Case’ played next to Bobby Womack’s ‘The Bravest Man In The Universe’ gave me the feeling that it was going to be a good night. It was. New York MC Pharoahe Monch held nothing back as he delivered a high-energy set that had the whole venue offering a middle finger salute to the police.

VJ duo NTSC warmed up first and provided a good selection of hip hop with entertaining videos such as the blaxploitation parody of DJ Nu-Mark’s ‘Dumpin Em All’ and ended their slot by inviting Sydney-based artist P Smurf to rhyme over his own video. New Zealand crew @Peace certainly won some new fans with their jazzy second-billed slot. The spirit of Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock filled the room as the two MCs rapped about weed, love and improving the world. Standard topics, tackled with style – the band deserved their encore.

“How many motherfuckers like lyrics?!” We all do, Monch, and we could hear them all as he ran through ‘Assassins’, the LL Cool J-sampling ‘Damage’ and ‘What It Is’, delivering every intense syllable as clear as day. Many of his rhymes deplore violence and spit in the face of authority so I found it an irony that his white v-neck T was adorned with military-style epaulettes and that a dog-tag hung around his neck. DJ Boogie Blind of The X-Ecutioners provided an interlude of double-copy brilliance and dropped crowd-pleasing excerpts of ‘Sound Of Da Police’ and ‘Fuck Tha Police’ as Monch urged police brutality to stop and asked us to clap to ‘Clap (One Day)’ in protest. I’m not sure many present had experienced questionable run-ins with the law but with Monch orchestrating passionately it was powerful nonetheless.

Hip hop’s ubiquitous bomb drop welcomed crossover hit ‘Oh No!’ with an excited crowd taking on Nate Dogg’s chorus duties, before a near riot ensued with the opening Godzilla sample of monster ‘Simon Says’. The last verse of encore song ‘The Light’ was delivered over Michael Jackson’s ‘Butterflies’ as lighters were held aloft. It was the classic rap show, overseen by one of the masters.

Article published in The Brag, 22nd April 2013
Photo by Jeffrey Lowy

Major Lazer – Free The Universe: Album Review

MAJOR LAZER
Free The Universe
Warner Music
3/5

Philadelphia’s Diplo has made a career of taking dance music from all corners of the globe – be it carioca funk or bhangra – and repackaging it for kids who are more used to a diet of commercial hip hop and house. Four years ago he teamed with fellow don of the dance Switch to create a fictitious one-armed zombie killer called Major Lazer who would front the pair’s take on Jamaican dancehall. The resulting album, Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do, was as exhilarating as it sounds.

Switch has since left Diplo to deliver the follow-up alone, with mixed results. Where the first LP got the balance right, Free The Universe strays too far from the blueprint. Almost every promising ragga rhythm soon gets lost to dubstep’s womp womp, Dutch techno fills and ‘Harlem Shake’ squeaks and squelches. The collaboration with Flux Pavilion, ‘Jah No Partial’ best illustrates how the sights of the Lazer have been readjusted to aim for the mainstream EDM (eurggh!) market: 30 seconds in the intro of Johnny Osborne’s classic ‘Mr Marshall’ descends into a barrage of sub-Pendulum sub-bass.

There are reasons to listen, though. The soca of new single ‘Watch Out For This (Bumaye)’ will have carnival crowds rocking from Notting Hill to Nicaragua. And, of course, there is triple j’s sixth hottest record of 2012, ‘Get Free’, although those who came to be introduced to the Major via that track may be surprised by the rest of the album. Only ‘Jessica’, sung by Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, shares its lazy skank.

The purists will be peeved but Major Lazer has given mainstream festival-goers a new soundtrack to lose it to during cider-fuelled summer evenings.

Article published in The Brag, 22nd April 2013

Lil Wayne – I Am Not A Human Being II: Album Review

LIL WAYNE
I Am Not A Human Being II
Cash Money/Universal
1.5/5

On his latest album Lil Wayne says ten words before he mentions his dick. As in: “I’m in the crib butt-naked, bitch / She say my dick could be the next black president”.  Haven’t we been here before?

Barack Obama is right: Dwayne Carter does indeed have a good flow, and in the mid naughties could confidently claim to be the best rapper around. But the man who lacks imagination when it comes to album titles – we’ve had Tha Carter I to IV and now two entitled I Am Not A Human Being – is now also completely devoid of originality when it comes to lyrics. His recent hospitalisation, regardless of whether it was for epilepsy or one too many servings of sizzurp, suggests Wayne’s mind hasn’t been on the music of late. This dirge proves it beyond doubt. Wayne sounds bored; listeners will be too.

Wayne used to tell us how good he is in the sack and how much money he has with humour and an inimitable swagger. On his tenth studio album and fourth in a little over three years, Wayne is sticking to the same subjects but doesn’t know how else to get his point across. Instead, he delivers nothing lines like: “Life ain’t shit but bitches and money” on ‘Trigger Finger’ and “Your bitch ride me like a go-kart / I play that pussy like Mozart” on ‘Curtains’.

The most intriguing moments on IANAHB 2 are when Wayne sounds like he’s riddled with self-doubt when he repeats “I swear to God I ain’t nervous” (on ‘Curtains’) and “I ain’t got no worries” (on ‘No Worries’) over and over. He’s clearly not in a good place right now.

Dick, pussy, money, bitches (repeat to fade)… ZZZZzzzzzzzzz…

Article published in The Brag, 22nd April 2013

Have Daft Punk’s Marketing Team Taken Us All In?

Anyone who has an internet connection (hello, you) will have heard about the upcoming Daft Punk album. And those of you who are discerning individuals with impeccable taste (hello again, you) will be wetting themselves at the thought of getting your hands on it.

By now, you know that it’s called Random Access Memories, and that the lead single features Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers of disco band Chic, and is called ‘Get Lucky’. And you also know that it dropped on iTunes 30 minutes ago.

You’ve forgotten something crucial, though: that Thomas Bangalter and Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo’s last album, 2005’s Human After All, was a bit shit. You, my friend, have been sucked in by the genius marketing machine of Daft Punk and their label Columbia Records.

Why You Can’t Wait

Contributing to the anticipation is not only the eight-year wait for a proper Daft Punk release, but the air of mystery that the band has engulfed itself in. The pair rarely do interviews and, as they always wear helmets in public and photos, you wouldn’t know either if they slapped you on the arse with a metallic-gloved hand. The album has been recorded in secret, with the finished tapes locked in a vault. But we’ll take what we are given.

Courtesy of Vice/Intel’s The Creators Project, a series of interviews with Daft Punk’s collaborators has been tantalising us with the excellent musicians involved –yet very little else has been given away. We know that this album focuses on live instrumentation, and we know that the only sample used comes from an Australian rock band. All collaborators so far — Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder and Todd Edwards — have praised the mysterious working methods of “the robots”, and talked about spaceships and otherworldliness that all adds to the sci-fi fantasy.

Crossing into another cultural sector, there are also the pictures of the band’s new chic image, with sharp sequined suits designed by Hedi Slimane of Saint Laurent – presumably after a rather large cheque was signed.

But the record company’s main tactics revolve around the drip-feeding of track segments. Drip-feeding has long been used in public relations for launches, but usually relates to the slow release of aspects of a story. Here, the content itself is being fed, bit-by-bit, to a hungry public and expectant media — before social media does the rest of their work for them.

Increasingly longer segments of ‘Get Lucky’ and ‘Lose Yourself To Dance’ have been revealed to a mass US audience during Saturday Night Live ad breaks and at the Coachella Music Festival. I’ve never watched an episode of SNL or been to Coachella, but the clips have been inescapable. 3.5 million people who have viewed the most recent video of ‘Get Lucky’ on YouTube in the several days since it was first aired. Watch it again. You know you want to.

Not only do these short clips make us both want to hear more and share them with our friends (to show we’re down with the mysterious act), but it’s also given bedroom producers the barest of bones to create their own edits of the new song. (Many are terrible.) Before the actual content has seen the light of day, there is gigabyte after gigabyte of content available for fans to soak up on the internet. Search for ‘Daft Punk Get Lucky’ in Soundcloud and see how many ‘fake’ versions of the song show up; they’re shared over social media, as rumours of leaks of the finished or unmastered track start “is it or isn’t it” discussions on message boards.

And because it’s being discussed in public forums, the media — like Junkee, and other news and entertainment sites — continue that discussion, mostly for the web traffic (hello, you).  Dance music bible Mixmag has even made a viral video by pranking a member of their staff, with the main aim, no doubt, of getting more eyes on their website.

And then, of course, there’s Wee Waa. Why pick a tiny rural town in Themiddleofnowheresville, NSW, Australia, to launch perhaps the biggest pop release of the year? Is it because of the satellite dishes, lending a loose space-age theme to the launch, or simply because of the town’s peculiar name? It’s all by-the-by. By unexpectedly selecting a town of 2000 people for the May 17 listening party, Daft Punk have created another talking point, and garnered press coverage in publications ranging from Reuters to Pitchfork.

For Daft Punk and Columbia Records, it’s classic marketing and PR supported by a big budget and expert execution. And again, we’ve all been taken in. Because although Random Access Memories isn’t being released until May 20 in the UK and May 21 in the US, it’s been fast-tracked to May 17 in Australia. Meaning you can listen to the album on your drive up to Wee Waa.

Not The First Time

Daft Punk aren’t the only ones who have used genius marketing operations to ramp up the excitement factor for a new release. Here are a few other imaginative campaigns.

Radiohead – In Rainbows

Pay-what-you-want. That was the simple marketing concept behind Radiohead’s seventh studio album, In Rainbows. After a split with record company EMI, and in an attempt to stave off fans illegally downloading it, Oxford’s finest invited punters to download the LP from their website and type whatever amount they were willing to pay in a box.

From music blogs to the mainstream press, the world went wild for the idea. It would prove once and for all that peer-to-peer pirates were really honest folk who would be happy to pay a sensible sum for good music, they said. Well, not quite.

Research by ComScore suggested that 62% of people paid not a single cent for the album, and about 17% paid less than 4 USD. It’s difficult to measure the financial gain for Radiohead compared to a traditional album release, but with an average payment of 2.26 USD per download of In Rainbows, and with the greater number who downloaded the album than otherwise would have — not to mention the publicity generated — it has to be deemed a successful experiment.

Lady Gaga – Born This Way

Gaga was arguably the first star to truly embrace the enormous power of social media. At last count, she has over 36 million followers on Twitter, second only to Anne Frank’s favourite popstar (but most of his are fake). She was also the first artist to rack up 1 billion YouTube views, and 56 million people have ‘liked’ her Facebook page.

To launch Born This Way in May 2011, she partnered with no-end of prominent online companies; with games developer Zynga, for GagaVille, a version of the enormously popular FarmVille game; with VEVO, giving them exclusive premieres of tracks; and with iTunes, for a promotional countdown to the May 23 launch date. The album was streamed for free on major news websites across the world and sold for just 0.99 USD as a digital download on Amazon in the US on its launch date. Deals were also penned with electrical retailer Best Buy and peddlers of crap coffee Starbucks, among others.

The album hit number one across world album charts — and had shifted 8 million copies by the end of the 2011.

Sigur Rós – Valtari

In 2012, for the release of their sixth album, the Icelandic four-piece and barmy creators of their own language gave 12 filmmakers an identical small budget to make films based on the album. There was no greater direction than that. Sigur Rós wanted the selected auteurs, among them Ramin Bahrani, Alma Har’el and John Cameron Mitchell, to make whatever they felt with complete creative control. Between May 21 and the end of the year, 16 mystery films were made and released.

In doing so, media were provided with interesting content to disseminate about the album every two weeks. And as well as being made available online, the films were shown at organised screenings and made available to buy as a DVD or digital download. And fans were invited to submit their own creations, too. Online marketers do backflips over ‘user-generated content’ like that.

So, Who Wins?

Whatever mind games Daft Punk are playing, and whatever dark arts Columbia Records and associated marketing agencies are employing, they’re all working. The combination of big money deals with TV networks and fashion brands, tight control of the release of musical content, the production of supporting content, and the facilitation of fans to create their own content and spread it virally makes Random Access Memories, to my mind, the best album marketing campaign ever.

Let’s just hope the album lives up to the insane hype, rather than sinking like the lead brick that was Human After All. Come on Robots – don’t let us down!

Article published by Junkee.com, 19th April 2013
Photo by Fabio Venni

James Blake – Overgrown: Album Review

JAMES BLAKE
Overgrown
Universal
5/5

As impressive as James Blake’s self-titled debut album was, the 24-year-old Londoner has taken a massive leap forward with his follow-up.

It inhabits the same aurally cavernous space but Overgrown builds on its predecessor in its lyrical and emotional directness – it’s better because Blake learned how to write songs and fell in love. He’s clearly grown in confidence, behind both the studio desk and the microphone, too.

On exquisite lead single ‘Retrograde’, Blake’s falsetto stands proudly out front with just a snare and a piano for company. A buzzing siren, rather than distorting and perhaps distracting as it might have on Blake’s debut, gravitates around the intensity of the vocal: “Suddenly I’m hit / Is this the darkness of the dawn? … Ignore everybody else / We’re alone now”. Here and on every other track, each musical element is precisely where it should be to elicit the maximum emotional response from the listener.

While Blake has become a more rounded singer-songwriter his continued love of forward-thinking dance music – despite his success Blake still runs a club night at renowned venue Plastic People – is still evident. ‘Digital Lion’, the collaboration with ambient innovator Brian Eno, is a tribal banger that Leftfield will wish they made. ‘Voyeur’ is pure peak-time techno (complete with synth cowbell) that somehow manages to be as moving as any of the album’s ballads, particularly when Blake sings: “Cause I am flawed / At times unsure / I should do whatever will make you feel secure”.

Just as he set out to do Blake has scored a direct hit to the heart, in the most sonically arresting way. Overgrown is outstanding.

Article published in The Brag, 15th April 2013 and The Music Network, 16th April 2013
Photo by NRK P3

The Knife – Shaking The Habitual: Album Review

THE KNIFE
Shaking The Habitual
Inertia
2.5/5

“Brilliant,” thought the befuddled music critic, “the long-awaited and largely incomprehensible fourth album from Swedish brother/sister duo The Knife comes with an accompanying manifesto. This’ll help me make sense of it all.”

Alas! Reading it only added to the confusion. The title of the manifesto will give you a clue as to its entirely batshit content: Some Feeling In The Bellies Of The Tankers Who Pass Us Making Sad Manic Bongs Like Drums.

The suspicions that getting through Shaking The Habitual will be a bit of a slog are present before you even press play: the album takes its title from a quote by social theorist Michel Foucault and clocks in at just shy of 100 minutes.

OK, so Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer-Andersson have always leant towards the weird, as anyone who saw Karin’s alter-ego Fever Ray in concert will attest to. On 2006 classic Silent Shout the duo distilled this oddness into an album full of dark, absorbing electro gems and similar moments this time do exist. The oriental percussion and instrumentation on ‘Without You My Life Would Be Boring’ is compelling; the distorted drums of single ‘Full Of Fire’ will get you nodding, if not for the full nine minutes of its duration.

But then there’s a track which lasts for 19 minutes. Entitled ‘Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realized’, it’s essentially a warped single note – it drones on for approximately 18 minutes and 30 seconds too long. ‘Fracking Fluid Injection’ sounds like a whale with a mechanical voice box having a drunken conversation with a handsaw.

It’s bold, perhaps brave. But, mainly, Shaking The Habitual is utterly bonkers.

Shaun Ryder: Interview

Pills ‘N’ Thrills And Comeback Tours

The prospect of interviewing Shaun Ryder, lead singer of Happy Mondays and chief hedonist of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s Madchester scene, is a daunting one. A polite note from his people instructs that he will not speak about “controversies from the past”. Anyway, should I broach an unwanted topic of discussion I will surely have in the back of my mind the story of how Ryder once pulled a gun on a journalist who upset him.

The reality is somewhat different. Now 50, Ryder has mellowed with age, is honest about his infamous antics and much more articulate on the changing nature of show business than you’d expect someone with his impressive past record for class A consumption to be.

Ryder is doing his bit to promote the reformation of the original Happy Mondays lineup, 19 years after they disbanded, and their impending tour of Australia. “We’re a lot better now,” says Ryder. “Before, when we were young, it was all about the partying. It was all about the fame, the girls, going to different countries, groupies. The last thing we ever really bothered about was the music.” That may be so, but despite cementing his place in rock folklore for such episodes as walking out of a multi-million dollar contract negotiation with EMI to get a KFC (band code for scoring heroin), Ryder is also responsible for some of the most inventive pop music of the time – songs like the ravey ‘Step On’ (“You’re twistin’ my melon, man”) and the baggy groove of ‘Loose Fit’.

The Mondays have reformed twice before and Ryder has always been frank about the reasons: to pay back vast debts to either the taxman or his former managers. But now he is finally clear of those financial burdens, I ask why he wants to do it all again. Money? Boredom? Unfinished business? “A bit of all of that really. And we got asked whether we’d do it. We’ve never stopped playing gigs in one shape or form – me, Gaz and Bez have always took the Mondays on and when we got asked to do the full lineup it was brill because these are the lads that wrote the stuff – they wrote their own parts.”

Ryder, drummer Gaz (Gary Whelan) and percussionist and ‘freaky dancer’ Bez (Mark Berry) are joined once again by guitarist Mark Day and even Shaun’s younger brother, bassist Paul, who vowed never to have anything more to do with the band after they split for the second time in 2000 – the siblings only began talking to each other again a couple of years ago. (There will actually be one original member missing – although he rejoined for gigs last year, keyboardist Paul Davis, who Ryder recently described as “still fucking raving barmy”, will not be heading Down Under.) The band has been back together touring for a year already and I wonder if it is a struggle to keep the peace. “It’s a totally different world,” says Shaun. “We’re all now in our 40s and 50s – there’s a totally different attitude. All those petty things that people had going are just gone.”

Shaun has spent time in Australia before, under the watchful eyes of 10 million or so British television viewers. In 2010, he was runner-up on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, a popular reality show where a dozen celebrities spend time in a bush camp somewhere on the Queensland/New South Wales border and  complete challenges to win votes from viewers. Ryder transformed his public perception in a matter of days. To non-Mondays fans he was no longer the druggy who said the F-word on teatime TV in 1997; he became that good-natured bloke who ate a crocodile’s cock. “You don’t really know the perception people have of you when you’re in there. The editors can make someone who’s absolutely fantastic look like a twat and someone who’s a total twat look fantastic.”

In admitting he was aware that the primetime show would take him to a new audience, Ryder reveals a shrewd understanding of the fame game but also a reluctance to play it. “I got asked to do [UK Celebrity] Big Brother a few years before but I turned that down – there was never a reason to do it. This time round I had things to plug. The record company wanted me to go in [the I’m A Celebrity… jungle], the management wanted me to go in, my wife wanted me to go in. I didn’t want to go in there. There’s still an amount of snobbery attached to those sorts of shows but I’m glad I did it.”

As he sees it, Ryder was just moving with the times. He has always maintained that his image, although based on a version of himself, was cultivated. Punters wanted their rock stars to be wild and excessive, so that is what the Happy Mondays became. Now, punters want to know the real person. “You don’t just sing in a band now. If you’re a kid that’s coming along now more than ever you’ve got to do TV … It is sad that you can’t just be a rock‘n’roll band and put an image out, because to get proper success you have to let people in now.” Ryder uses 24 Hour Party People, a semi-fictional 2002 film about the Mondays’ label Factory Records to explain the chasm between the reality of his alcohol and drug use during the band’s heyday and the part-myth he purposely preserved: “If they wanted an in-depth Shaun Ryder that guy in the movie couldn’t have got out of bed and put his pants on … That portrayal was a caricature. That’s the Shaun Ryder from the Melody Maker and the NME and drunken stunts on TV pop shows.

“When I started in this game you were rock‘n’roll, Johnny Cash Man In Black or whatever. You had that, that’s it. The game changes – it used to be rock‘n’roll, now it’s showbiz.”

Article published in The Music Network, 10th April 2013 and The Brag
Photo by Man Alive!

Bilal: Interview

At the turn of the Millennium US soul music was in a state of rude health. The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill had switched everyone on to ‘neo-soul’ and D’Angelo was at the peak of his powers.

Then in 2001, along came an artist whose debut album, 1^st Born Second, expanded the boundaries of this recently labelled genre and threatened to blow the too-small box into which he was being forced to smithereens. Bilal Oliver did cut his chops singing in the church, but was also a classically-trained performer capable of singing opera in seven languages who loved freeform jazz.

In the 12 years since, Bilal has failed to really capitalise on that early promise and not much has been heard of him. But Australian fans will soon get to hear his exceptional voice as he visits the country for the first time and showcases material from new album A Love Surreal.

Speaking from his home in Brooklyn, the laid-back Bilal remembers how his love for music was formed when his father used to sneak him inside the jazz clubs of his childhood home, Philadelphia: “I used to have to sit in the back where the cigarette machine was. They had a curtain they could put over me just in case the police came. I remember sitting back there watching all of these different bands who really intrigued me a lot. I liked the way the cats dressed, the way they talked. I got to see Terence Blanchard, Kenny Kirkland, Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts. I was 13 years old – I made up my mind then that I wanted to be in music in some kind of way.”

Stints with various bands at high school followed before Bilal met many of the musicians that were carrying the torch for soul in the 21^st Century and eventually became part of their loose collective, The Soulquarians. “I met Ahmir [‘Questlove’ Thompson, of The Roots] through jam sessions in New York City. Ahmir used to come to that jam session, Erykah Badu. Everybody. Common, Mos Def. And from there I would go to the jam sessions in Philadelphia and meet more people. I would go up and sing. I just kept showing up to all of them, ha ha.”

One of Bilal’s earliest mentors was fellow Soulquarian, the late hip hop super-producer J Dilla. “Oh man, I just learnt his fearlessness, his charisma,” says Bilal. “He had this kind of way where he made everything look easy and he didn’t really have any boundaries when he was creating. I’ve seen Dilla play bass, guitar, drums and he taught himself how to play them all. He was really inspiring.” Bilal talks about his departed friend with a deep sense of gratitude. “He opened my mind to just exclude rules. Coming out of school you think there’s a rule for everything. After working with him I threw all of the rules out. Do whatever your heart says, y’know?”

After the commercial and critical success of his first album, Bilal was eager to experiment further on his next. “On the first album I was allowed to produce but I had to have kind of a ‘big brother’ watching over me,” he says. “This time I wanted to produce on my own and that started some friction.” A series of drawn-out rows with label Interscope ensued. Interscope eventually rejected the album, Love For Sale, which was subsequently bootlegged and leaked on the internet. Does Bilal have any conspiracy theories about the leak? “Hmmm, you know, I have a few. Of course, I’ve tossed that around, thinking maybe it was an inside job.”

Bilal admits that for a brief time he wondered whether he would ever release his own material again, which made the completion of his 2010 LP Airtight’s Revenge all the more satisfying, particularly when it earned him a Grammy nomination. “It really just fuelled me to do what I wanted to do because there was no filter for the music on that album,” he says. Now Bilal is back to somewhere near where he feels he should be at this point in a difficult career, with a third album that he is pleased with and that he hopes will open him up to more fans. He says: “I wanted to make an album that was more accessible. On Airtight I got a lot out. So, on this record I was in a warmer place and in a different kind of vibe. On this record I’m still speaking about passion and I’ve just focused a lot of it on love stories.”

Looking back on a decade and a half as recording artist, Bilal makes no secret of the fact that has spent much of it frustrated at the industry’s gearing towards making money. But he’s philosophical about his experience. “It’s the story of an artist,” he concludes matter-of-factly.

Article published in The Brag, 8th April 2013 and Beat, 10th April 2013
Photo by NRK P3