It has been a long while since I reviewed any music: my life became rather full of obligations, which reduced my output and eventually halted it altogether. Between then and now I have had the chance to reflect on what had become a somewhat procedural activity, and I have reached a few decisions. From now on, I will write about only one record at a time, and I will write about only those submissions that I feel are particularly interesting objects for discussion, rather than prioritising by quality, by aesthetic preference, or by the receipt of a physical submission. However, at the point at which I realised I couldn’t possibly…
July 19, 2016
Ashley Reaks has a good way with lyrics himself, but there’s a strong synergy to his collaborations with spoken word artist Joe Hakim, such as ‘I Want To Get A Celebrity Pregnant’ from Before Koresh. Hakim is a social observer, a curator of experience who speaks sometimes from a lived subjectivity, and sometimes from a presumably imagined one, often in successive lines, articulating marginalities and bearing witness to acts of unconscious resistance. As such his concerns are distinct from those to be found on the Ashley Reaks albums from which he is absent, such as the satirical character portraits and serial-killer aesthetics…
July 13, 2017
0