"Out of Phase" was nominated for Album of the Year in the recent Independent Leeds Music Awards. Search for it on the internet and you'll struggle. Local shops had sold out when I went looking. So by the time I tracked down my own copy I was expecting something a bit special
I was not even slightly disappointed. ELIPHINO crops up at drum n bass events, moves in and out of the electronic underground, keeps a low profile and takes his music seriously. The eleven tracks of hip hop beats and cuts, three with MCs, are brought in and then closed down with a dream-like ambient phase at start and finish. His whole sonic world is thereby framed and protected and it is a very beguiling world.
The general feel of the music is cool jazz, spiked with sharp snare, draped with translucent overlays and freshened regularly with deliriously inventive twists. Children's voices, rustled leaves, vinyl surface noise - whatever the source material - everything works to a pulse and a melodic rise and fall. Bass and sax are the characteristic instruments, always gently insistent, mellow and rich. Birdsong, piano, harp. cello and violin show their dreamlike faces in the steadily changing (urban) landscape.
The sublime modesty of the music discourages me from over-describing. MCs HAIKU, DOUBLE D DAGGER, CHIEF WIGGUM and PROOPTIC feature on "Now Till It's Gone", "LaidBack" and "Occupations". Each one puts a clear personal stamp of authenticity – their own voices, their own rhymes done with the same mature confidence that drives Eliphino's music. I sense no emulation, no aspiration to be anybody else. This is a cliché free zone. It’s tempting to contrast this artistic maturity with the stilted posturing of the standard city guitar bands. But there's no need. DOUBLE D DAGGER fizzes with virtuoso poetic intensity. HAIKU sounds more street level, but still sneaks in a regional reference to Alan Bennett that made me laugh out loud. CHIEF WIGGUM and PROOPTIC are more aggressive and West Yorkshire, syllables like machinegun bullets, spitting their way through fractured communities. In each case, the focus is on the genuine voice - it's only later you realise how perfectly ELIPHINO has set the platform to suit the subtly different styles.
|
This, as they say, is music that has done its homework. A bravura recording that really should be given much wider attention. For the time being you could try emailing Tom at ics4tw[snailthing]leeds.ac.uk or pestering www.jumborecords.co.uk
A record of this quality shouldn’t be a rarity.
|
